“wir wissen was das in der Realität bedeutet. Aber psychologisch sagt es uns gar nicht.”

“We know what it means in reality. But psychologically, it tells us nothing.”

From “Hemmung, Symptom, und Angst” (Inhibition, Symptom, and Anxiety). 1926.

F. Kafka

“The reality of things is the work of the things; the appearance of things is the work of man….”

Everything is busy being just what it is, and as humans we are busy putting expectations on things, projecting ourselves onto things, and sense-ing only parts of things. As a person, I, myself, (and you, yourself) are busy being your own thing, whether you realize it or not. Other people go around misinterpreting us and only seeing parts of us.

After my ellipses Schiller continues, “and a nature which delights in appearance no longer takes pleasure in what it receives, but in what it does.” At first this second half didn’t make much sense to me, but upon reflection I see that Schiller is saying we should not just revel in what the senses take in, but use our reason to look deeper, beyond the surface.  This is an almost perfect quote for the psychoanalytic stance: withdraw your own impressions of what first appears to your senses, recognize and withdraw your own projections and transferences, and then explore what is really presenting itself.

Self-reported individual differences in attachment insecurities (anxiety and avoidance) are sometimes assumed to tap only conscious mental processes, although many studies have found correlations between such measures and responses to the Thematic Apperception Test, the Rorschach Inkblot Test, and diverse laboratory measures of unconscious mental processes. Dreams offer another route into the unconscious, as Freud famously claimed: a route found useful in psychotherapy. In this study, approximately 1000 dreams reported by 68 young adults who kept dream diaries for a month were analyzed using the Core Conflictual Relationships Theme method, and the themes were examined in relation to (a) scores on the Experiences in Close Relationships measure of attachment anxiety and avoidance and (b) stress experienced the day before each dream. In line with attachment theory and previous research, attachment-related avoidance predicted avoidant wishes and negative representations of other people in dreams. Attachment anxiety predicted wishes for interpersonal closeness, especially in dreams following stressful days, and negative representations of self and both positive and negative representations of others, with negative representations being more common in dreams following stressful days.

Similarly, Freud and tons of post-Freudian (and non-Freudian) psychoanalytic movements focus on allowing the individual to reveal himself or herself and gradually grow in their own personal direction. Summers provides an explanation of the Romantic movement, evidence of its influence in Freud’s methods (but perhaps not his theories, according to Summers), and three clinical examples.

Summers observation is particularly relevant for that awkward stage when we feel caught in the land between to opposites and we are waiting for the third way of being to present itself. “In this dilemma,” Summers writes, “the quandary of two unpalatable positions, that owe can cash in on our romantic heritage .  As we have seen, desire, interest, passion, and values all contain an imaginative component . . . . Pointed towards the future desire includes a trjectory for what can and might be.”

As an example, we are presented with the case of a patient who recognized that she often loudly and vocally imposed her desires upon others. She realized that her behavior habit was not helpful in her relationships, but initially she could only see the opposite behavior, being a doormat of sorts, as the only other option. Instead, by focusing on her values, desires, etc. the patient found a new third way of existing: listening and acknowledging others while still expressing her own side of things. “Her most fundamental new way of being was the freedom to determine when and how to deploy her aggression an exercise her empathy.”

Summers is spot on with his conclusion that analysis functions at its best when it is “in line with one of the great traditions of the humanities, the romantic concept of the highest good, Bildung, the realization of self-potential.”

Thanks for the enjoyable article!

Many of us, though, aren’t very good at accepting those same faults and imperfections in ourselves.

The research that Parker-Pope cites suggests that if when we show ourselves the same kind of compassion and acceptance that we show our loved ones then we are much more likely to take care of ourselves.  We are also more likely to reach different goals we set for ourselves if we encourage rather than berate ourselves for our mistakes.

I’m thinking I’ve heard all of this before.

In his 1914 essay “On Narcissism: An Introduction,” S. Freud describes a situation where we develop a narcissistic internal image of our ideal selves and use it as a standard against which we judge our drives, desires, and actions.  This ideal is based on images of what we could or ought to be that we learned from our parents, from society, from religion, etc.

When parts of ourselves don’t measure up to that ideal, things get ugly. We begin to repress and avoid things that don’t fit up with the ideal. In other words, when the ideal us goes to the gym six days a week, but we skip a day, then we become upset that our actions don’t mesh with our perfect selves.  By contrast, if we recognize the reality, that we are not our perfect egos, then we are more likely to be able to do something about the situation.

Is science reconfirming and repackaging Freudian ideas?

- Shakespeare, The Tempest