Arthur Janov's Blog, page 50

An Examination of Psychoanalysis (Part 4/11)

A Theoretical Compromise: Trauma Plus Instinct
So far , we have Freud's etiological theory of neurosis has moved through two stages. In the first, childhood sexual trauma was emphasized (the seduction theory), and in the second, instinctual drives were emphasized (the libido theory). Sulloway points out that in this second stage, "neurosis was interpreted as the repressed 'negative' of a stage of perversion."[1] Freud did not leave it at that, however.
The publication of Beyond the Pleasure Principle in 1920 established the third and final stage of Freud's theory where he renewed his emphasis on childhood trauma as a cause of neurosis. Basically, Freud blend ed his first two stages of thought into a recognition that both factors -- childhood trauma and repressed instincts -- functioned as instruments of neurosis:

Henceforth traumas, operating independently of repressed perversions, were given increasing recognition as major sources of neurotic symptoms...(Freud) subsequently extended the role of childhood traumas to include a regular series of developmental disturbances, or "threats," to libido: birth, loss of the mother as nurturing object, loss of penis, loss of the mother's love, and loss of superego's love.[2]

Sulloway points out that this period of Freud's work also reflected his renewed effort to bring together the two fields of science which he believed would finally result in a unified theory of human behavior:

Of all of Freud's works, Beyond the Pleasure Principle offers perhaps the closest conceptual ties to the unpublished Project for a Scientific Psychology, drafted a quarter of a century earlier. One is struck by the bold and frankly speculative vein of both works as well as by their common guiding principle --attempt to unite psychology with biology in resolving his most fundamental questions about human behavior. Biology, as he reaffirmed in the later work, was indeed "a land of unlimited possibilities."[3]

There are, however, important conceptual differences between Freud's Project and his Beyond the Pleasure Principle -- – differences , which might partly account for the non-biological direction ultimately taken by psychoanalysis as a theory and a therapy. Concepts in the Project were based upon "proximate-causal reductionism" whereby the mechanisms of psychophysics and neurophysiology were used to explain human behavior. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud shifted his vantage point to one of "ultimate-causal reductionism" where historical and evolutionary factors moved into the forefront. Sulloway evaluates:

In many ways Beyond the Pleasure Principle is the culmination of Freud's remarkable biogenetic romance about human psychosexuality, a romance first cultivated some twenty-five years earlier in the wake of his problematic Project for a Scientific Psychology. It is historicism, not mechanisms or psychophysics, that pervades the innovative logic of Beyond the Pleasure Principle. It is also historicism, not mechanism, that enabled Freud to extend his biogenetic romance from the very origins of life itself, through the evolutionary odyssey of primal man, and finally to the conflict-ridden problems of present-day psychological man.[4] 

A Primal Evaluation
Sulloway points out that it is historicism rather than psychophysiological mechanisms which characterizes Freud's later formulations. In these formulations we see Freud opt for hypothesis over reality, for "biogenetic romances" and "evolutionary odysseys" over present, personal human experience. Freud became more of a philosopher than an empirical researcher, preferring ontological ruminations over the once-treasured biological mechanisms. Even with his eventual redemption of trauma to a position of importance in the etiology of neurosis, the person under consideration still remained over-shadowed by rather monumental laws of phylogeny. Individual experience took a back seat to the playing out of mysteries inherent in the species.
Of course, phylogeny is part of the dynamic backdrop to individual experience. Nevertheless, each person truly has a life of his own, with an evolution specific to it. If the dictates of phylogeny are what we must battle, then we know we enter a losing cause -- with compromise the only solution. Psychoanalysis teaches us the inevitability of this compromise and helps us to support it. It teaches us to fear the real self as threatening, for with all of its innately perverse impulses our only recourse is to work on control and sublimation. But, paradoxically, it is actually control (repression) of the real self which has lead to perversity, and it is admission (experience) of the real self which makes sublimation irrelevant.
No doubt there are some powerfully influential forces from the occult world of phylogeny which are unknown to us. That is no reason, however, to make those found the center of attention, subordinating the known realities of individual experience to them. We can relate much more easily to our real experiences, real memories, and real feelings than to universal mysteries of which we are but a minute part. It is certainly difficult to understand how we are going to recover from those real experiences by trying to view them in the light of hypothetical universal principles
With the libido theory, Freud disavow s the reported personal experiences upon which his seduction theory was based in order to espouse the exact opposite. Not only were his patients not traumatized by the parental sexual abuse they had reported, worse: Freud now contended that they actually had longed for it as children. This longing took the form of an unconscious wish which was itself a derivative of some primary biological impulse for sexual union with the parent.
It is just conceivable that a child might wish for sexual union with a parent -- or at least appear to -- but it is not an inborn instinctive impulse, as Freud would have us believe. Certainly a child does not need sexual union. If it occurs at all, it is because the child somehow senses that sex is the only way she may have the contact and love she truly needs. Of course, the child would prefer the natural form of attention, but a desperate child will take what is offered. In spite of appearances, however, it is not the sex the child wants, but the contact. The child's need might appear sexual because that is often the only way parents (and other adults) can look at sensual need. Sexualization of childhood need comes not from the child but from the parent. After all, sexualization can only come from the one with sexuality.
It 's clear that Freud viewed the issue of childhood sexuality from a backward position. Too often, parents want sexual contact with their children, even though beneath that desire lies parents' own neglected primal needs.
The neurotic gets many of his primal needs "satisfied" through sex because sex offers the gratification of all the senses. Therefore it has great symbolic possibilities for ameliorating the past neglect of those senses. In addition, neurotic parents invariably want from their children all the things they were denied in their own childhoods -- affection, stimulation, support, attention, etc. When these two factors combine, the parent is likely to act out his primal needs through sexual contact with his child. This may lead the child to conclude unconsciously: "If I want Daddy to love me, I have to give Daddy what he wants." This idea then gets shortened to: "I want what Daddy wants," which ultimately becomes, "I want Daddy" -- which is then completely misconstrued as a sexual desire. The natural desire for contact came from the child; the sex came from the parent.
How did this erroneous view of childhood sexuality take hold? If children are sexual, then indeed they would have to inhibit their instincts because of the harmful possibilities of incest. But children are not sexual; they are sensual. It is when sensuality is mistaken for sexuality that it is subjected to the taboos appropriate to sexuality and incest. In other words, the necessity to inhibit sexuality between family members is co-opted to help repress sensuality as well.

Infantile sexuality becomes a dangerous concept when it is applied clinically and heralded as a cause for adult neurosis and adult Pain. It is dangerous because it implies that the victim --the child -- is his own assailant. The neurotic adult is left with nothing more than his own childish incestuous desires to explain his agony and his debility. Worse, the concept is itself seductive. It is an adult concept that falsely exonerates the adults who hold it. It perverts the neurotic child's reality by ignoring the deprivation inherent in the very creation of neurosis.
If it is the child's sexual desires that ultimately sicken him, and if it is the cultural taboo on incest that is responsible for such hysterical fear, then no parent need wonder at his or her role. The culprit again becomes an amorphous, impersonal, and immutable force: the taboos of society. The implication is that this conflict is inevitable. All children will desire to have sex with their parents; the desire will always be strongly forbidden; so all children must learn to deal with their desire in the face of the taboo in the best way possible. Those who manage this task will be well; those who don't will be neurotic.

Here Freud is far removed from the grim realities of the neurotic child's life. The child does not fear some abstract taboo, he fears being violated by his parents in concrete ways. He fears being abused, neglected, manipulated, ignored, humiliated, controlled, pressured, raped. He feels fear each time his needs are rebuffed, overlooked, or devalued. He fears not being taken seriously; he fears not having any power to decide how he spends his day, what he eats, how he talks, what he feels.

[1]Ibid., p. 409.
[2]Sulloway, pp. 409-410.
[3]Sulloway, p. 415.
[4]Ibid., p. 415.

On Hijacking Sex - Part 2

I have written about hijacking before. When there is sexual excitement the lower brain levels are activated along with whatever strong imprints live there. The strong stimulation resonates with the early imprint and reactivates it. It now joins the sex act and forces the run-off of sex via the imprint. It merges seamlessly with the sex act, the build-up and final release so that the person can no longer tell which is which. In the same way that some emotional stimulus in the present activates deep brain structures, and again there is the run-off of sex through the imprint.

Example: a man had a depressed mother who never smiled nor showed any joy. He needed some show of recognition, some bit of joy to see him, some piece of emotion that meant he was important to her. What stimulated him in sex was staring at pictures of nude women showing joy at the sight of their nude man. Here was the merger of primal need and sex. The only way he could discharge the tension was through the ritual that fulfilled his need symbolically. Sexual discharge relieved the tension of his need. Otherwise how could he get relief? The only way was to feel the need exactly for what it was, relive the pain and discharge the feeling in a real way…. A primal.

Another man, and I should say, men, because it is so frequent, had to dress up in women's clothes and masturbate; or have his girlfriend dress up in a bra and panties and masturbate him. Why? His mother was left by his father when he was five years old. She left for work every day, but left her clothes on the chair in the bedroom. He started out rubbing her clothes all over his body; a way to feel close to her. Later, as he became sexual he would either dress up in women's clothes, or use them to masturbate with and find relief through sexual discharge. Again the merger of need and sex. Relief through a symbolic channel. Sex looks real but for the neurotic it becomes symbolic channel for relief. As excitement in sex builds so does the need for symbolic channels. And the very early imprint is so strong that it drives the obsession. It becomes compulsive; he can't stop, not because he is so sexual but because he is so needy and needs to relieve himself through sex.

So when a therapist tries to treat sexual compulsion as a sex problem she may be way off; treating the wrong thing; treating the symbolic outlet instead of the need.

When a young girl is shushed a lot and quelled from showing great enthusiasm it affects sex because her sexual expression is also suppressed. As her enthusiasm in sex builds so does the repression; the result is abortive sex, lack of climax, and frustration. In short, sex is an expression of all of ourselves, not just the sex organ. It is at the core of our being. And altering sex life and sexual neurosis means that a lot of later pain has to be relived before we can significantly affect sex. Check out your own fantasies and rituals and see how it tells you what needs were fulfilled early in your life.

How Long Will I Live?

I have always maintained that we can get along without therapy with the use of tranquilizers and pain-killers. The only problem with that is that we can cut off the message of very early remote memory to the prefrontal cortex with medication but the imprint goes on rampaging throughout the system. Now, we have some supporting evidence. In the Psychiatic News (March, 2009. "Mortality with Antipsychotic Use in Alzheimer Disease." Page 25) they discussed a study in which mentally ill patients received antipsychotic medication, and others who did not. (Haldol, Thorazine) The probability for survival was high in those who took no medication. After two years those who continued to use medication had only a 46 percent chance of survival, while those who took no medication had 71 percent chance.


In other words, being on drugs can kill you; and can kill you much faster than not taking drugs, given approximately two groups with the same mental health problem. Yet not being on drugs can kill us in a different sense; producing ineffable misery. Thus, drugs simply suppress pain, leaving its force intact. And, as I have said many times over, repression is the number one killer today because it underlies so many different kinds of diseases. Pain-killers put more pressure on the

system by adding to repression. So here we have a self-deluded state; a person out of touch with what he is feeling, and doctors add to that delusion by helping the patient deny his feelings. Long-term drug therapy can be dangerous to our health.


There is other evidence. There is a greater risk of stroke in those taking medication; an obvious conclusion when we are busy holding back pain and feelings; the pressure has to go somewhere, and the brain is an obvious choice because that is where we focus our mental efforts.

An Examination of Psychoanalysis (Part 3/11)

Freud's Second Model of the Mind: A Tripartite System
By 1914, Freud had reformulated his view of repression. He had originally conceived of the process as occurring in a simple and straightforward manner: the ego was the agent of repression, and the unconscious was the receiver of the repressed material. Now he contended that "a special psychical agency" was responsible for repression, which he called ego ideal, so named because it contained the ego's ideals, and had as its tasks repression, morality, conscience, censorship, etc. By 1923 Freud had changed the name of his new agency to superego, thus establishing his famous tripartite model of the mind.
In a nutshell, this model classified mental activity in terms of its
degree of accessibility to consciousness (whether it was unconscious, preconscious, or conscious), and in terms of its function: whether it was a part of the duties of id, ego, or superego. The ego and superego could operate on both conscious and unconscious levels, but the id remained wholly unconscious. Both ego and superego emerged out of the id, which was the prime material of the mind, and contained "the core of the unconscious, the source of all passions, and the biologically innate in man."[1]
Freud's last discussion of his model of the mind occurred in An Outline of Psychoanalysis (1938). Herein he maintained the germinative position of the id, and reaffirmed the same general topographic divisions and qualities of mental functioning described above.


Freud's three mental divisions often describe the interactions of the three levels of consciousness at a psychological level. The Freudian model does not correspond to the real neurological structures and functions which science is finding today.
Nevertheless, there are aspects of the Freudian model which cannot be discarded altogether. To be fair, the Freudian formulation does broadly imply (if it never specifies) some correspondence with underlying neurological structures. The psychological components of id, ego, and superego are seen as common to all of us, and therefore must rest upon those physiological attributes which as members of a species we have in common. In other words, the physiological side of the body-mind duality which Freud initially set his sights upon establishing and then abandoned must nonetheless have remained as a background to his thinking. Just because he could not see the connection does not mean that he ceased to believe it existed. We feel certain that if Freud had had the same experience and knowledge that is available to us now, he would have had little hesitation in renouncing (or drastically redefining) the id-ego-superego model in favor of a formulation which could be used interchangeably by both psychology and neurology. That is, after all, what he set out to discover when he embarked upon his Project.
Freud could not "see" the full unconscious, so he called it "blind." Because he did not realize that it could be known directly through feeling, he decided that it was "unknowable."

A Sexual Etiology of Neurosis: The Road from Trauma to Instinct
In addition to his work on The Interpretation of Dreams in the late 1890s, Freud was formulating his sexual theory of neurosis. Since patient after patient had reported infantile and childhood seduction traumas, Freud first conclu ded that these experiences were the cause of adult neurosis: the memories of the trauma had to be repressed, and so various neurotic defense mechanisms were developed. By May of 1897, however, he had shifted this view to what he termed "a big advance in insight" in which he now saw impulses rather than memories as the cause of the problem:

The psychical structures which in hysteria are subjected to repression are not properly speaking memories...but impulses deriving from the primal scenes.[2] 

Thus, what Freud had originally viewed a result of personal traumatic experience, he now saw as a result of universal and innate impulses.
By June of 1897 he had conceptualized the Oedipal Complex (hatred of the same-sexed parent by the child), and by July he was "viewing the psychoneuroses in terms of a vicious and dynamic circle of perverse libidinal impulses undergoing continual repression and resurgence."[3] {Emphasis added.} Freud himself wrote:

The result (of the repression and resurgence process) is all these distortions of memory and phantasies, either about the past or future. I am learning the rules which govern the formation of these structures, and the reasons why they are stronger than real memories, and have thus learned new things about the characteristics of processes in the unconscious. Side by side with these structures perverse impulses arise, and the repression of these phantasies and impulses...gives rise to new motives for clinging to the illness.[4] {Italics added}

By September of 1897 Freud had completed his fundamental writing to his friend Fleiss about "the great secret which has been slowly dawning on me in recent months." The great secret was a realization that the reports of early seductions from his patients were, in most instances, simply not true. This was no easy admission for Freud to make, as it brought into serious question the validity of psychoanalysis as a method of psychological investigation. After some inner turmoil, however, Freud reasoned that the commonality of the reports was in itself significant, and that surely it was reflective of some common, underlying principle of human behavior.
Freud now moved on to solve his theoretical dilemma by proposing just such a principle: reports of childhood seduction traumas actually represented infantile seduction wishes. These wishes were secondary manifestations (derivatives) of underlying (primary) instinctual impulses. In other words, infants and children have innate, sexual impulses toward their parents. These biological impulses give rise to mental wishes which must be repressed because of societal sanctions. The wish then surfaces in adulthood as a report of trauma, because that is the only acceptable way to express it.
What is the significance of Freud's theoretical shift? It seems twofold.
First, by minimizing the role of trauma in neurosis, Freud moved the focus of psychoanalysis away from personal, concrete experience and placed it on impersonal, imperceptible instincts and impulses. One of Freud's biographers, Ernst Kris, contended that, with this revision, Freud "turned psychoanalysis into a psychology of the instincts." The irony here is that although instinct is a legitimate scientific concept, Freud's successors have not brought Freudian instincts any closer to scientific (neurobiological) validation than they were in Freud's day.
The second significant aspect in this shift is the validity and meaningfulness Freud attributed to internal psychological processes. Although the memories of seduction traumas were not true in terms of external events, he contended that they did represent a kind of "pseudo-memory" which was a significant and meaningful fact in its own right. He further understood that repressed fantasies and wishes (which arose as the pseudo-memory of trauma) could exert the same lasting effect on personality as the actual experience. This innovative viewpoint really constituted a new view of reality. Intangible wishes, emotions, and fantasies --in short, the invisible inner worlds of man -- were recognized as having a directive impact on us equally as potent as the impact of the visible, external world.

Freud's Mechanisms of Pathology
Three more concepts in Freud's theory of infantile sexuality bear discussion. After 1900, Freud proposed three "fundamental mechanisms of pathological development," which were the vehicles of adult neuroses: fixation, regression, and the pertinacity of early impressions. He drew all three concepts from the biological sciences, reinterpreting them in a psychological context.

Fixation 
As we know, Freud by this time strongly believed in infantile sexuality. The question was not whether or not one had had some kind of early sexual experience, but what the consequences of those experiences had been. If the consequences were painful or punitive, a "pathological fixation of the libido" would probably occur, putting the child squarely on the road to adult neurosis.
Freud saw fixation in the psychological sense as the persistence of an unconscious wish , which had been dominant at an earlier stage of development. A simple example of this would be the adult who is plagued by compulsive overeating: in psychoanalytic terms he would be described as fixated at the oral stage of development. Freud initially emphasized the impact of sexual experience producing fixation. By 1905, however, his thinking had shifted to a new direction, now establishing heredity (rather than the actual sexual experience) as the critical factor which determined the outcome of the fixation:

He (Freud) recognized libidinal fixations as having three possible consequences -- neurosis, normality, or perversion -- with the particular outcome being attributed largely to heredity -- that is, to whether there is an organic disposition toward repressing the fixation.[5]

Theoretically, a person with the right genes could undergo a sexual trauma in infancy or childhood and come through it "normally." The main (if not only) variable in the issue of infantile sexuality thus became heredity. Sexual experiences were bound to occur; fixations were bound to occur; but neurosis would result only if there were an unfortunate "organic disposition toward repressing the fixation."

Regression
In Freud's concept of regression, he again moved his thinking away from actual experience in favor of hypothesized forces. According to Freud the regression that occurs in the "severely neurotic" is governed by the "hereditary constitutional factor." This factor was itself a convergence of three different layers of experience -- familial, ancestral, and species-related -- which were either innate or inherited.[6]
Although the relevance of personal life experience was again minimized in this formulation, Freud somewhat reinstates its value with his third concept.

Pertinacity of Early Impressions
In the third formulation of this time period, Freud proclaimed "the pertinacity of early impressions" as another critical factor in his childhood etiology of neurosis. Recognizing the principle as a "provisional psychological concept," he offered a biological analogy from embryological experiments to justify his position: sticking a needle into an embryonic cell mass results in much more serious damage when it is done during the early stages of growth. The psychological corollary was that the earlier a trauma occurred, the more serious and enduring its impact.
Freud believed that early experiences were important to the degree that they affected libidinal development, and that relatively minor experiences could result in adult neurosis. Sulloway explains that Freud's "belief in the primacy of early experience...allowed Freud to attribute the neuroses of adults to relatively small disturbances in childhood libidinal development."[7] Thus instinct (libidinal development) remained the centerpoint for even this principle; it served to further minimize the role of trauma and experience in the creation of adult neurosis by reducing it to "relatively small disturbances".


[1]Sulloway, op. cit., p. 374.
[2]Sulloway, op. cit., p. 204.
[3]Sulloway, op. cit., p. 206.
[4]In Sulloway, op. cit., p. 206. (Original source: Origins, p. 212.)
[5]Sulloway, op. cit., p. 212.
[6]See Sulloway, pp. 289-309, for a detailed discussion of this factor.
[7]Sulloway, p. 389.

An Examination of Psychoanalysis (Part 2/11)

Freud's Biological Roots: The "Project for a Scientific Psychology"
Immediately after completing Studies in Hysteria with Breuer in 1895, Freud undertook one of his most ambitious projects: the formulation of a "Psychology for Neurologists." Comprising three notebooks (two of which contained over 100 manuscript pages), Freud's Project for a Scientific Psychology was probably the clearest statement of his desire to establish a neurobiological model of the mind. In explaining the purposes of the Project in the opening chapter, Freud wrote:

The intention is to furnish a psychology that shall be a natural science: that is, to represent psychical processes as quantitatively determinate states of specifiable material particles, thus making those processes perspicuous and free from contradiction.[1] [Emphasis added]

The content of the Project was ambitious: Freud proposed three separate systems of neuronal activity to account for the varying functions of perception, memory, and consciousness . He also proposed neurophysiological models for the "ego functions" (such as cognition, judgment, recall, etc.), sleep and dream states, and hallucinatory and hysterical states. Despite these rather formidable accomplishments Freud failed in the one area in which he was most interested: the discovery of a biological model of repression. He had wanted to achieve nothing short of "a comprehensive physiological explanation of...the precise neurological and chemical details of repression."[2] Since he viewed the problems of defense and repression as the "core of the riddle," his inability to solve the riddle constituted a major professional loss.
In writing to his friend Fleiss about the first two notebooks of the Project, Freud lamented that the third one, which dealt with the longed-for "mechanical explanation of neurosis," was not "hanging together." By 1896 Freud had abandoned the Project altogether. This failure triggered a decisive turning point in his career in which he ruefully abandoned the unattainable biological laws for more accessible and less disputable psychological concepts. He wrote:

From this point onwards, I shall venture to leave unanswered the question of finding a mechanical representation of biological rules such as this.... Perhaps in the end I may have to content myself with the clinical explanation of neurosis.[3]

This is precisely what Freud proceeded to do.

Freud's First Model of the Mind: A Bipartite System

What Freud had originally described in the neuroanatomical language of the Project in 1895, he now re-described in psychological concepts in his historical The Interpretation of Dreams in 1900. Here he presented what was assumed to be his first formulation of the structure of the mind a psychological description of the "psychical apparatus."
The unexpected discovery of the Project in the 1950s threw shadows of controversy over The Interpretation of Dreams , which had b een always regarded as Freud's first masterpiece. In light of the Project, some historians believed that Freud's psychological re-formulation in The Interpretation of Dreams amounted to nothing more than a "convenient fiction [that] had the paradoxical effect of preserving these [biological] assumptions by hiding their original nature, and by transferring the operations of the apparatus into a conceptual realm where they were insulated from correction by progress in neurophysiology and brain anatomy."[4] In effect, a kind of conceptual whitewash job. Sulloway evaluates:

Did Freud...simply retain old-fashioned neurological terms (e.g., "cathexis") while giving them a new and independent psychoanalytic meaning in The Interpretation of Dreams and subsequent works? Or, are the outmoded nineteenth-century neurological constructs so evident in the Project still holding up the creaking scaffolding of present-day psychoanalysis, as Robert Holt insists, and has their cryptic nature insulated psychoanalysis from a much_needed rejuvenation within the fertile field of neurophysiology where it originated?[5] 

We have no way of knowing if , as Holt suggests, Freud consciously or unconsciously intended to insulate and protect his theories by means of a psychological reformulation. It seems likely that his new terminology might have been a legitimate attempt to sustain psychoanalytic theory despite lack of scientific corroboration, and to propose concepts that might be clinically useful in understanding the human mind. What is noteworthy in this controversy, as Sulloway indicates, is not so much what Freud failed to do, but what his successors have chosen not to do . That is , o rejuvenate modern-day psychoanalytic theory "within the fertile field of neurophysiology where it originated." 

Freud's First Model of Mental Functioning

Freud initially divided the mind into the unconscious system and the preconscious system. Contents in the preconscious system, he theorized, could enter consciousness fairly easily. One need only give sufficient attention and energy (cathexis) to them and they would pass into conscious thought (the "transference phenomena"). A rarely purchased grocery item, an unimportant phone call, the title of a book, and so forth, might slip forgotten into the preconscious for a period of time, but could be remembered. Unconscious contents, however, never had direct access to consciousness. They had to first pass through the preconscious system, which modified them into a form suitable for conscious perception. Thus:

We were only able to explain the formation of dreams by venturing upon the hypothesis of there being two physical agencies, one of which submitted the activity of the other to a criticism which involved its exclusion from consciousness. The critical agency, we concluded, stands in a closer relation to consciousness than the agency criticized: it stands like a screen between the latter and consciousness.[6]

Here we see Freud's free use of metaphor ("it stands like a screen") to depict processes he had formerly described in Project in terms of cell permeability and impermeability, the "inertial pattern of neuronal discharge," and the phi, psi, and omega system of neurones. One might even say this new reformulation anthropomorphizes, with its "critical agency and its "agency criticized" submitting and excluding information between both sets of ideas. This is not to devalue the reformulation, only to point out the degree to which Freud had turned in a different direction.[7]
In essence, Freud suggests that we cannot receive anything directly from the unconscious. All unconscious wishes, impulses, and motivations first had to be censored and altered by a "passage" through the "screen" of the preconscious. This screening process was most clearly observable in dream activity. One could deduce the original unconscious content -- say, a desire to murder the mother -- and see how it was redressed by its passage through the preconscious: in the manifest dream, the dreamer makes several unsuccessful attempts to kill a pesky mosquito. And so forth.
What is interesting to note here is that even at this early point Freud saw the mechanisms of censorship and repression as non-pathological. They could become pathological through the neurotic process, but they were first and foremost a critical part of maintaining normal mental health -- so critical, in fact, that psychosis would result if they failed.



[1]
[2]In Sulloway, op. cit., p. 113.
[3]In Sulloway, op. cit., p. 126.
[4]In Sulloway, op. cit., p. 120 (quoting Robert Holt).
[5]Sulloway, op.cit., p. 120.
[6]citation?
[7]It is important to realize that although Freud had opted to draw this "first crude map" of the mind in the hypothetical (and often metaphorical) language of psychology, he made lt quite clear that he viewed psychological processes as derivatives or secondary manifestations of the underlying and primary biophysiological processes -- which he still hoped someday to discover.

Revamping Psychology

What we need to do in psychotherapy is to rid ourselves of a class of elite cognoscenti who are the center of all psychologic knowledge. The patient is the only one who has knowledge of her unconscious. We therapists can only guess at it. When we operate on theories that are constructed out of the unconscious of psychologists rather than based on the internal reality of the patient, we become tinkering mechanics, altering our techniques more out of whimsy than science. Until now, there has been no theoretical web that encompasses both psychology and neurology, although there have been attempts to join psychoanalysis with neurology. It is, by and large, a shotgun wedding. It is the same as plastering an old outdated notion onto new science and hoping it will stick. If psychoanalysis ignores key internal realities, it doesn't matter that we adhere certain neurologic facts to it. It cannot work. Why would we take a theory one hundred years old and join with it research that may be six months old? The marriage can't last; the groom is far too old for the bride who has new ideas and new information. The youngster is trying to lead the old man but the old man is too feeble to keep up. Better a young theory that works within neurologic principles.

It's a Matter of Life and Death

Remember how I always say that getting rid of childhood pain is often a matter of life and death, well there is now some evidence about this. (s. Entringer et al. Proceedings of the national academy of sciences2011' 108 (33)"Stress Exposure in Intrauterine Life is Associated with Shorter Telomere Length in Young Adulthood." http://www.pnas.org/content/108/33/E513.full)

My position for years is that if we reverse childhood and intrauterine trauma we can lengthen telomeres. Why is that important? Because it seems that the length of telomeres can determine how long we live. I have defined telomeres previously but the importance of this article is that childhood abuse and trauma even while we are being carried will shorten our lives. What the research does not say is how to find a way to reverse the damage so we can extend life a long time. I believe that there are many ways to reverse the damage in neurologic damage but only one way to do it properly. For example, when there is trauma while we are in the womb there is a process called methylation that takes note of the trauma and marks some of the cells; stamped "trauma" here. And that will change us forever, including how long we live.

One way to reverse this damage is to demethylate. Change the methylation so that the damage is reversed. Another way is to relive the damage and be done with it. This is preferable because it is not one chemical that we are dealing with; it is systemic and covers and covers all the accouterments that went with the imprint. The imprint, remember, is that mark, that memory that stays with us for a lifetime. It is not just a wee mark; it has the capacity to change our brain cells, our hormones and the set-points and our neurotransmitters our neurotransmitters for life.

How on earth can we do that? We know that there are three key levels of brain function and we know that imprints of our life in the womb can be installed deep into the brain stem, limbic system and associated nerve cells. These imprints are engraved onto a naïve, innocent and very primitive nervous system. As our ontogeny progresses, our personal evolution, information through nerve tracks reaches up and forward to inform high brain levels; higher levels of consciousness. Fortunately, there are descending tracks descending tracks as well that reach down and affect the primitive imprints. Thus when a patient is reliving something from childhood or infancy that information can descend down deep and reawaken the first-line brain stem imprint which joins the fray; well, not a fray, but it dredges up a force where serious physiologic reactions physiologic reactions join the second-line childhood reliving memory, the feeling, and takes part in the overall primal or reliving event. That is the heart rate, blood pressure, temperature, neurotransmitters, and on and on, join the feeling and give it great force. It is now part of the reliving; part of undoing the damage. We see this in so many ways: during the reliving the first line which is activated, makes the brainwave amplitude skyrocket, we well as blood pressure and heart rate. And afterward. After the total reliving experience, there is a drop in all key indices below baseline. The body is normalizing and relaxing and healing. My guess is that it is also changing telomere length over time.

What we note here is how resonance works; higher levels of brain function trigger off associated lower levels through either chemical affinities or brain circuits (or both)that may have similar or identical frequencies. (much more of this found in Life Before Birth). Each level adds its specialty. The second line adds feelings, the third line cortex adds comprehension and the first line adds basic physiologic force. Think of it as rods that evolve carrying information upwards as we grow up and later when we vibrate those vibrate those rods they resonate lower down and set off deep biologic reactions. We do not see them as such because they are not a separate force; they become part of the overall reaction. As the rods vibrate they turn anger into fury, disappointment into hopelessness, fear into terror; and then as the reactions in the reliving go on there is a final normalization. So we relive the deep early imprints without being aware of it.

Is this clear? That when there is resonance, fear on the top level gathers the lower levels into its maw and uses the new input, (like a rolling stone), terror, as part of its reaction. That is, the very depths of resonance hit the brainstem where fury and terror exist and then they join the feeling being relived. There is no resolution or undoing the damage without reliving all levels. The good part is that we are not usually aware that we reliving a speech-less level; it just signs up and joins the army; an army of feelings arrayed against the suppressing forces of the intellect the intellect. The first line is giving a big physiologic boost to this army.

The feeling brain here joins the reptile brain for a wee party; and that party is a celebration of the joy of life because that is what is happening. We are coming alive again, lifting the yoke of repression and bidding bon jour to joy at being alive. We can't come alive in psychoanalysis where only the intellect is engaged (ah yes, a few tears but never the first line, which after all, is our life blood).

My goodness. I got off the track. The researchers found that prenatal exposure to stress affected the development of the chromosome regions that control cell aging. It is as usual said in dry, unenthusiastic language instead of screaming out a discovery that will help us live longer. We can be emotional and scientific at the same time. Mothers need to have a calm, content life while carrying; that is for sure. But if they don't there is a solution. After all, they can't help it if there was a war going on or terrible famine. They are fearful and rightly so. This study did the obvious; relating stress we can all agree on: the death of a loved on, for example, but not the deception of a wayward husband.

What I have seen is that repressed individuals do get sick with all kinds of diseases too soon in life. They have no idea they are carrying around a message from the womb; letters from the underground (apologies to Dostoyevski), a message that foretells of an impending death.

Telomere length not only foretells of early death but also of serious disease on the way there:diabetes, cancer and heart disease, and I would add, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's .

Here is how they conclude: "A rapidly emerging body of human and animal research indicates that intrauterine conditions play an important role not only in all aspects of fetal development and health across gestation and birth, but also in a wide range of physical and mental health outcomes over an individual's entire lifespan." How can anyone make it clearer than that?

On the Inability To Say "Good"

Let me tell you a story, sadly, not a bedtime story but more like a nightmare. I tell you because many of you want to hear more about me. But I do not write about me as an exercise in narcissism; rather it is always to elucidate, to help others understand themselves.

Many years ago when my father was alive he came over to see the grandchildren. It was 1969. As he walked in he saw a bunch of papers on the dining table, and said, "what's this?" I said it is a book I just finished called The Primal Scream. He leafed through it for less than 30 seconds and said, "We know all this," dropped it and went on to something else. He didn't have time to read even one page but he knew "all this." It hurt, of course, but it was the leitmotif of our relationship.

He was a failure in everything he tried, took a correspondence course in law and failed that, and felt very stupid. He was, after all, a truck driver. He then would never allow himself to feel stupid again; hence "we know all that." And he could be reassured that he was not stupid if he could put me down. Which he did at every turn until I was convinced I was stupid and never thought about college until I was sent to university by the Navy. The idea that his "stupid" son wrote a book was far too threatening to him. He could not let himself try to understand it, and maybe find out he couldn't.

It is an art form never to say an approving word to your child in the twenty years you spend together. But his inner feelings would not let him do anything else. It was too painful to feel like a failure.

Now two forces were at work. One my left brain: "he couldn't help himself. He had a driving, disapproving father himself. " And the other--right brain: I hurt. And my primal was, "Say I'm good, just once, please!" There was where the hurt resided. He never thought about hurting me. He only thought about defending himself no matter what the cost to others. He wasn't relating to me; only to himself. He couldn't see the agony he was producing because he was trying to extricate himself out of pain. But his need set me on a lifetime goal of "say I'm good." And I became good at what I did because I worked like mad at it. But it was always there in my behavior until I felt it in primal.

So you now see the difference between primal therapy and psychoanalysis: one is left brain; "after all", says the doctor, "you have accomplished so much. You really are good." And primal: "I feel bad. I hurt, say I'm good, please." That stops the act-out and lets us rest. So the real feelings are down deep and right brain, while the excuse, the rationale is left brain and helps cover over the right brain. It can bury that brain amidst a flurry of rationales. And alas, it ensures that we spend a lifetime trying to get something in the present that never existed in the past. We chase a chimera, a phantom, some ineffable something that, believe it or not, we are never aware of. The act-out is as unconscious as the feeling itself. The chase is on and we simply cannot relax after that. We go to the beach, lie in the sand, and cannot stay like that for more than a few minutes than the phantom rears is head again. We run from the feeling just like my dad. He was a victim of his feelings which he never knew existed but that kept him from loving anyone. He was waiting for it first for himself.