DGB-NP, Essay 6: A Freudian Pre-Classical, Classical, and Object Relations Integration of Psychoanalysis and Beyond...

Updated: December 30th, 2016

Abbreviation Code

1. DGB: David Gordon Bain; Dialectic-Gap-Bridging;

GAP: Gestalt-Adlerian-Psychoanalysis; The 'GAP' between different paradigms or lines of thinking, feeling, wanting, doing...

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Good day!

I do not wish to keep re-inventing the wheel here but I do wish to communicate my ideas in as simple and straightforward a fashion as I possibly can. For those of my loyal readers who are going to get some redundancy here, I apologize. However, even as I am writing now, old DGB ideas are still evolving in the context of early Freudian theory (1892-1896) -- what we will call 'Pre-Classical' or 'Reality' Psychoanalysis; and later Freudian theory (1897-1938) -- which is usually referred to as 'Classical' or 'Fantasy' Psychoanalysis.

My name is David Gordon Bain. I am putting this essay out as the first of X more to come in 2017. I want to have this project finished by the end of 2017 and published in book form. I see 100 essays as a good number to shoot for -- if it turns out to be shorter or longer we will adjust: I already have about 150 essays in my LinkedIn Archives leading up to the point that we stand here now.

What is the purpose of my mission here?: To reinterpret, rebuild, re-synthesize all of Freud's work as can be found in James Strachey's Standard Edition of Freud's Complete Psychological Works in light of the state of present-day 2016-2017 knowledge, and the many, many theorists who themselves have re-interpreted or rebuilt Freudian theory (including all of the philosophers who came before Freud -- particularly, Hegel and Nietzsche. I was very close to calling this work 'The Hegel-Nietzsche-Freud Hotel').

First, for those of you who do not know my background, let me give you a quick resume of my education and experience in psychology. 

I entered The University of Waterloo, Ontario in 1974, and in my last year there, in 1979, I wrote my Honours Thesis in psychology for one of the earliest cognitive-behavior theorists and therapists -- Dr. Donald Meichenbaum. Today, looking back at this essay from a psychoanalytic or neo-psychoanalytic perspective, I would say that it was an essay on 'Central Ego Functioning and Dysfunctioning' from a Cognitive-General Semantic and Humanistic-Existential perspective. 

I introduced what I will now call 'The ASPIRE (Associated-Stimulus-Perception-Interpretation-Response-Evaluation) Model' of Central Ego Functioning and Dysfunctioning. The paper needs to be reworked a bit -- it is a rather robotic, mechanical paper although I tried to add a humanistic-existential flavor to it in the last part of the essay. Whenever you start thinking about the human mind in terms of 'part-functions' and 'ego-states' or 'ego-compartments', you run the risk of presenting what can sound like an overly contrived, mechanical, robotic model -- but there is hardly a model or theory out there that does not do this in some form or fashion; how else do you describe in an organized fashion the psycho-dynamics and activities of what you want to write about....'Verbs' and 'processes' become 'nouns' and 'structures' even if they still should be viewed as process...but this is the general habit of human thinking -- theorists take 'still snapshots' of 'moving actions and processes' and call them 'ego-structures' and 'ego-states' and 'ego-compartments' that are carrying out 'ego-functions' that can turn into 'ego-dysfunctions'....

The 'path' that I was taking from then to now -- 1979 to 2017 was certainly, by no means, a straight, direct path. It was more like walking the longest, meandering river in the world. The Nile, maybe? Understand that I was doing all this as a 'hobby' while I was making my living in the transportation industry and raising two children with my common law wife of 11 years (1980-1991) -- and beyond that, in other relationships.

To return to my first major integrative essay of 1979, by the time I finished the essay, I realized that there was a 'deeper, more complex' body of knowledge that I needed to study and investigate -- specifically, or at least mainly, the 'Cognitive-Emotional-Impulse-Driven-Behavioral Templates' (CEIDB Templates) that exist in our subconscious mind from early childhood that play a very integral part in the ASPIRE model I mentioned above relative to our conscious decision-making and conflict-resolving process. 

Alfred Adler used to call this aspect of our cognitive functioning our 'private logic' because it entailed much of what is both 'unique' and 'subjective' -- and often 'dysfunctional' -- in terms of the early generalizations we make about life and people including our own self-image and the way we approach and/or avoid people.

Thus, much of what we might call 'cognitive dysfunctioning' is 'housed' within these early CEIDB templates and because they are put together when we are very young -- and metaphorically 'cemented' or 'conditioned' into place, often by strong emotion, and then basically buried subconsciously/unconsciously -- they generally are not easy to 'dislodge' or 'dismantle' or even modify years later by ourselves, and/or even with the help of a counselor or therapist.

The dysfunctional element in these CEIDB templates include areas of 'over-generalization', 'extreme logic', and 'unbearable ideas' that will not only affect the way that each individual child will view the world and him or herself for the rest of his or her life, but also in terms of extreme perspectives, emotions, and behavior, may bring the so-affected person to consider seeing a therapist many, many years later. For some, this may not be necessary or desired; for others, it may be viewed as a desired and/or a necessary route to go. If there is a court ruling, and/or jail sentence involved, it may be a mandatory requirement.

I have a new name for these CEIDB Templates 36 years later due to my now heavy psychoanalytic -- in combination with Adlerian and other 'Neo-Psychoanalytic' -- influences. I now call them our Master-Oedipal-Lifestyle-Encounter Templates (MOLE Templates) which integrates much of the essence of what I have learned in those 36 years from studying Gestalt Therapy, Adlerian Psychology, and Psychoanalysis.

In addition to calling this brand of 'logic' a person's 'private logic', Adler also referred to it as a person's 'lifestyle' or 'lifestyle goal/plan' or 'lifeline'. I took courses in Adlerian Psychology in 1980 and 1981 at The Adlerian Institute in Ontario and had the pleasure of hearing Dr. Harold Mosak and Dr. Stan Shapiro speak on different subject matters before I left the Institute. What I learned there in those two years would remain with me in the evolution of my later integrative thought.

There are two further influences of the 1980s and 1990s that I would like to briefly mention here. before we start to delve deeper into the subject matter of my presentation.

Firstly, while reading a book on Gestalt Therapy one day, I happened upon the name of 'Hegel' and started to realize how Hegel's 'bipolar and dialectically integrative logic' -- usually presented as 1. thesis; 2. anti or counter-thesis; and 3. dialectic integration or synthesis -- played a major role in the thinking of Freud, Jung, and Perls among others in their respective 'intra-psychic conflict models' of the personality as well as their respective approaches to psychotherapy.

This re-introduction to Hegel -- I had also been briefly introduced to his brand of thinking while I was at The University of Waterloo -- opened up the whole subject matter of Western and Eastern Philosophy of which I followed down that investigative trail at my own leisure and pace for quite a few years until the second of these last two influences suddenly took over. 

I was browsing through a downtown Toronto bookstore one day when I happened upon a writer who sounded rebellious and interesting. I had never heard of Dr. Jeffrey Masson before but, in leaving the bookstore, I had purchased Masson's 'Assault On Truth: Freud's Suppression of The Seduction Theory'; and also, 'Final Analysis: The Making and Unmaking of a Psychoanalyst'. Somewhere along the line around this same time, I also purchased Janet Malcolm's 'In The Freud Archives'...and before I knew it, I had been 'seduced' into the whole 'Seduction vs. Oedipal Theory Controversy' which would lead me into the early history of Psychoanalysis, and into the much more substantial project of Reconstructing Classical Psychoanalysis. The idea here was to re-construct the best of Freud's thinking while 'weeding out' the 'patriarchal' and 'sexist' ideas in his thinking which do not have a place in current thought.

In university, I had also read quite a few Erich Fromm books: Escape From Freedom, Man For Himself, The Art of Loving, and The Sane Society which also gave me more of a humanistic-existential perspective on Psychoanalysis -- or 'Neo'-Psychoanalysis -- all of which were coming together in my many evolving models of the human psyche, each one changing with the addition of each new and significant influence, Eric Berne and Transactional Analysis being another important one. 

In 1938, in Freud's second last significant paper, Freud wrote a rather remarkable essay called: 'Splitting of The Ego in The Process of Defense'. It was remarkable in at least two different ways: 1. it linked Freud's latest work to his earliest work -- his earliest 'pre-psychoanalytic' work involving his 'trauma-seduction theory' (1892-1896) which after 1896, he largely rejected and/or ignored until this last shocking little essay of 1938 where Freud, basically on the verge of death's doorstep, still showed some remarkable new insight into the workings of the human mind, perhaps partly influenced by the beginning of Melanie Klein's early work in the 1930s, which would open up the new and exciting branch of present day psychoanalysis called 'Object Relations'. Thus, this little paper not only linked Freud's last work with his earliest work, but it also helped to open up the door to 'the splitting of the ego' which would become one of the main defining points of Object Relations -- and later -- Transactional Analysis. It also can be viewed as an important foundation of the model I wish to quickly present to you before I leave this essay as the model that drives DGB-GAP Neo-Psychoanalysis.  

In Freud's classic 1923 essay, The Ego and The Id, Freud introduced for the first time his now famous triadic model of the human psyche: The Superego, The Ego, and The Id. This model is a very Hegelian model in that it fits easily into the mold of 'Thesis (Superego); Anti-Thesis (Id); and Synthesis (Ego)'.

The model of the human psyche that I am using today is a 15 part expansion of this model which comprise the whole subject matter of the 100 essays to follow.

A/ Super Ego-States or 'Upper Zone' Ego-States

1. The Oral-Nurturing Superego;

2. The Narcissistic-Hedonistic Superego;

3. The Anal-Righteous Superego;

B/ 'Middle Zone' Ego-States

4. The Private-Shadow Ego;

5. The Central (Mediating-Executive) Ego (and 'Phenomenology of Spirit');

6. The Public-Social Ego;

C/ 'Lower Zone' Ego-States

7. The Oral-Nurturing Underego;

8. The Narcissistic-Hedonistic Underego;

9. The Anal-Righteous Underego;

D/ Id-MOLE Formations and Genetic-Potential-Self (GPS) Formations

10. 'Fully Bound', 'Partly Bound', and 'Unbound' 'Id-Mole' Formations including 'Transference-Immediacy-Constructions (TICs)' and 'Transference-Immediacy-Projections (TIPs)'

11. The Id Censor;

12. The Id Vaults;

13. The MOLE (Master-Oedipal-Lifestyle-Encounter) Templates;

14. The Id;

15. The Genetic-Potential-Self (GPS).

This has been a huge integrative project -- a lifetime of work still evolving as I write -- that seeks to integrate Pre-Psychoanalysis with Classical Psychoanalysis and Object Relations, as well as Adlerian Psychology, Gestalt Theory, Transactional Analysis, Cognitive Therapy and General Semantics, Humanistic-Existentialism in a background of Western and Eastern Philosophy, Neurology, Biochemistry, Medicine, Politics, Business, Arts and Science.

In honor of Anaximander, Heraclitus, Lao Tse, Plato, Aristotle, Epictetus, Diogenes, Epicurus, Spinoza, Schelling, Hegel, Adam Smith, Schopenhauer, Marx, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, Foucault, Derrida, Ayn Rand, Erich Fromm you may see the following passage at the end of each of my essays:

'Everything is dialectically connected -- somewhere between expanding and contracting, evolving and de-evolving, changing and not changing, chaotic and orderly, id and ego-driven, ego and alter-ego driven, civil and uncivil, power driven and co-operation driven, power and sex driven, contact and withdrawal-driven, closure and un-closure driven, constancy and unconstancy-driven, pain and pleasure driven, money and not money-driven, narcissistic and altruistic, overt and covert, cooperative and rebellious, humanistic and de-humanistic, existentially alive and existentially dead, etiologically and teleologically driven, reductionistic and pluralistic, quantumly entangled and quantumly disentangled'.

An extension of this 'multi-bipolar, multi-dialectic-quantum-entanglement' theory is the philosophical and metaphysical idea that we live in a world of 'parallel sub-worlds' that can be metaphorically and metaphysically visioned as being built on top of each other, stratified, dialectically connected, and quantumly entangled -- from microbiology to biochemistry to neurology to philosophy to psychology to science to art to business to politics to cosmology -- again, in the words of Spinoza -- Everything is connected.

For me, everything in DGB-GAP Psychoanalysis revolves around my expanded, modified version of Freud's Oedipal Complex (Id-MOLE Complexes) in relation to probably Freud's most universally accepted concept -- transference.

For me, the whole of The Standard Edition of Freud's Complete Psychological Works is my play/work ground and my re-interpretation of it is what I will present over the next 100 essays or so -- in as simple and straightforward a fashion as I possibly can.

For some of you who stay with me, it may sound like a 'scientific fairy tale' -- but that is the nature of the business, the art, and the science of psychoanalysis and neo-psychoanalysis -- for any experienced clinical psychologist and/or psychotherapist -- the unconscious/subconscious psycho-dynamics of the human mind often does sound like a scientific fairy tale.

I hope you stay with me through this entire presentation.

Have a great day!

-- DGB, David Gordon Bain

A Note on References:

References are generally a sore point for me because I write most of these types of essays from my head, my accumulated knowledge, and my memory of what main books I drew my influence from. Books that I may have read many years ago, I can't always easily find. I like to write fast -- and references, grimace -- slow me down. This having been said, I am making it a priority to re-organize my library so that my most important reference books are within my easy, fingertip grasp.

Chief amongst these is Strachey's 24 Volume, Standard Edition of The Complete Works of Sigmund Freud (1966...1991, Hogarth Press, London, England).

Also, important is Ansbacher and Ansbacher's edited compilation of, The Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler (1956, Basic Books, 1964, Harper and Row Publishers, New York, New York);

Fritz Perls' first book, Ego, Hunger, and Aggression (1947, 1969, Vintage Books, New York, New York);

Harry Guntrip's book, Psychoanalytic Theory, Therapy, and The Selfis a good historical introduction to Object Relations Theory. (1971, 1973, Basic Books, New York, New York).

I will cite more references as they become relevant in my presentation to come.

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