The vertical Ego E-Book

Günter von Hummel

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 195

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Our usual social Ego is oriented horizontally. In the vertical, there has only been spirit or God from above and drive and affect from below. Just recent psychoanalytical studies have described the very early body-self-mirrorings, according to which the infant still remains largely in volved in itself. Even in adult life these experiences of morroring the inner vertical, or better espressed as a vertical Ego, still play an important role. The author shows this with many examples, but also describes a self-therapeutic procedure that is built up from seemingly such contradictory elements as psychoanalysis and meditation. According to the instructions, anyone can learn it themselves by means of two exercises.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Reinventing Psychoanalysis

Image and Word Effects

The Thing itself

The negative Space

The Beauty Spot

The Vertical

The Quantum Psychology

The infinite Straight Line and the Circle

The autochthonous Enjoyment

The 'Involuntary Soliloquies'

Appendix

Bibliography

1..Reinventing Psychoanalysis

For a long time I have believed that psychoanalysis is a third science that has established itself alongside the natural and human sciences. It is based on the assumption that the nature of man is his relationship to man, and I particularly liked the word nature in it. But then, what is the nature of nature, I thought to myself stupidly and began to question the nature of sciences more closely. It is in line with this that the French psychoanalyst J. Lacan in his twenty-fourth seminar asked himself the question, whether classical psychoanalysis is not based on the nature of an "autism in twos". Finally, in the psychoanalytic session, the analyst and his patient decide that, although neither of them knows anything about the other and they have no fixed subject matter, they will sit together for a few hundred hours (apparently just each for himself).

So when conventional psychoanalysis behaves like an "autism in twos", it is much like someone who likes to read books goes to a clothing store and asks the salesman for a good novel. These two also face each other with consternation, at first. But perhaps the salesperson mischievously asks back: produced in a soft and warm tone like flannel or cool and light like linen? After all, the two won't be talking so completely at cross purposes. The seller takes the word 'good novel' allegorically, the buyer probably wants a piece of clothing that fits like a 'good novel'. It's about two qualities, good and novelistic, which can be taken like flannel or linen, and on which two strangers, two foreigners, could agree, although they apparently don't speak the same language or - to take up the concept of nature once again - are of different natures.

Quite the opposite is what the science journalist M. Gladwell writes in his latest book, namely that people believe too much of what others, especially strangers, are telling them.1 They do not come to an agreement with this, but constantly talk past each other, even though they use the same language. They speak, but they say nothing to each other, while the clothes salesman and his customer say much more to each other than is necessary and only need two words (qualities). They seem to have fallen out of time, while the people in Gladwell's bestseller are constantly looking to be at the same level of communicative interaction while applying interrogation, important conversation and abuse assessments.

Before I come back to Gladwell, let's get back to psychoanalysis. In it, two protagonists circle around each other as two unknowns, as in an inaccessible jungle or some other, otherwise completely deserted country, as two autistic people. The survival artist Rüdiger Nehberg once met someone like him in the Brazilian rainforest, but Nehberg didn't have much in his hands, while the other seemed well equipped. Nehberg was at survival training, where you weren't even allowed to carry a knife, so he was a bit in panic. The two greeted each other friendly, but couldn't the other think that Nehberg was carrying enough money with him or that for some other reason nothing could kill him?

No one would know about it, for tens of miles there was no human being. Nehberg resorted to a ruse and called Roberto or Mattheo in a loud voice, as if he were with a friend who was within calling distance. Indicating that he was not alone, he could now exchange a few words with the stranger and get an idea of him, even engage him in a conversation from which he could better assess the person opposite. Even before Roberto or Mattheo had to be called again, they could separate again and wish the stranger good further wanderings. Such behaviour had been exactly the opposite of Gladwell's: Past each other, but for once it went well.

For Gladwell is of the opinion that most people are in a precarious "truth mode" in which, as I said, you first believe everything that the other person, especially the stranger, tells you, even if it is strange, unpleasant, grudging or questionable. The author describes cases from politics, criminology as well as abuse and other affectively charged situations, which usually do not end well, because autistic people talk past. What he means, however, is actually the mode of an anticipated truth, a overly hasty conclusion, a verbal relationship naivety. This is exactly the opposite with the psychoanalyst, because he does not believe anything his patient says. Even if the patient does not lie openly, the psychoanalyst still knows that he is definitely not telling the truth. Similar to the clothes salesman, who knows that the other person does not want what he says, but the truth is in the air if you have a good allegory at your disposal. The buyer finally gets a text. . ., a textile.

The psychoanalyst possesses such truth in the form of the 'infantile sexual' discovered by Freud, which remained hidden in the unconscious even late in the life of the neurotic patient. The truth must first be found on the basis of this allegory, because it is still unconscious and can only be clarified through many and long conversations. The psychoanalyst has to lure his patient out of his hiding place by offering 'free association'. Saying whatever comes to his mind reminds the customer in the textile shop, which forces the salesperson to make bold comparisons, and enables the therapist to interpret what is to be decoded from between the lines, between the associations. Now the patient comes to the psychoanalyst in order to find such a clarification that can cure his symptoms, but he resists, he does not want to find the truth immediately and not exactly, he hides inside himself.

In contrast, in Gladwell's descriptions, people do not hide from themselves, but from others, which is particularly clear in the case of the shielding of double agents. A female agent, who was employed as a spy by the American CIA, had to hide from her bosses during the prescribed biannual tests by them, because in reality she was working for the Cuban secret service. But it took twenty years before she was arrested, even though there had been repeated suspicions during her interrogations that she was engaged in counter-espionage. They were also mutually autistic.

One time, the double agent hesitated too long with an answer, another time she was clearly confused. The interviewer had wanted to know, whether something had happened on the way home from her office or whether she had seen someone she knew. She had, but it was one of her Cuban colleagues, whom she of course had to pretend not to know. It was considered an agreed sign to call the central office in Havana. After all, a secret service agent cannot simply be called on the telephone. She couldn't even afford a wink when she saw her colleague.

Nevertheless, it was a huge problem when her own inspector, now an the American one, so decidedly asked her if she had seen anyone on her way home. Such a question does not sound like a pure coincidence, the interviewer must have known everything. He must have known about this distinctive mark, right? Because he could also have asked, "did you get a call from Cuba days ago"? Or "Where were you the day before yesterday?" Anything could be a hoax or the truth. The double agent almost collapsed because of the question about the way home, the colleague from Cuba might have revealed something. But she simply said 'no', they saw nobody and - nothing happened. The interviewer was in the "truth mode" and believed her. The visible associations of her confusion were not used. Only much later was she exposed.

However, the two psychoanalytic autistic people, the therapist and his patient, constantly try to expose themselves, because they have nothing else to say. "There is, however, one thing that makes it possible to break up this autism, and that is that language is a common feature and that is the guarantee that psychoanalysis does not irreducibly limp from what I have just called “autism in pairs".2 So it is not so bad when two people, total strangers, each with their own individuality, sit down together to express themselves and reveal themselves when they use the common feature, which is the language that opens and reveals itself totally. Of course the double agents do not do exactly that, which is in contradiction to the way it is in psychoanalysis.

But is it really always enough to be able to speak openly to anyone at any time and with anyone, if one so wishes? After all, it could be the case that no one can do anything with the other person's sentence, for example, that the salesperson thinks his customer is crazy. Or the patient in psychoanalysis has a resistance to the Id, not only from his Ego, but from the depths of his Id, of his driving forces, to block the revelations of an 'infantile sexual'. For this reason, that of perfect non-understanding and non-comprehension, the well-known linguist N. Chomsky tried to find a grammatically correct sentence that is meaningless.

Chomsky wanted to show that the essence of language can only be grasped formally and not purely in terms of content. He wanted his generative grammar to be the original formula par excellence, and semantics, i.e. connections of meaning and other things based on it, to be developed. The sentence that Chomsky finally found, which was to be completely meaningless in terms of content, read as follows: "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously". Sounds really quite chaotic. Now, this sentence is absolutely not meaningless.

It was perhaps invented at a time when there were no Green parties or corresponding politicians. For the fact that 'green ideas' can be 'colourless' and perhaps even 'sleep terribly' because of this, does not sound - at least psychologically - nonsensical. Politically, one may discuss it or even the opposite may be true. Later, linguists therefore chose a different sentence: "The Gnafel gircht, that Inkeln are schnofel". But here too, there is clearly - perhaps even better than in the first sentence - a sense to be found. The 'Gnafel' may be a somebody, possibly a mythical fairy-tale figure, a goblin or gnome, but in any case he is one who obviously does not speak a modern language. He mumbles, grumbles, grunts, groans, gargles or articulates himself in any other way. Furthermore, it is clearly expressed that the Inkeln (probably similar and yet opposite creatures than the Gnafels, because both names sound like medieval, strange creatures) are 'schnofel' (stupid, shabby, snotty or whatever is meant more derogatory). So the statement of this sentence is clear and not meaningless.

Lacan therefore rightly thinks that every sentence - however disfigured it may be - has meaning. He wanted to point to the meaning of the unconscious, that area of the soul, which - as he says - 'is structured like a language' and thus can articulate itself somehow meaningfully, even if it does not happen by itself. Like a 'language' means: the unconscious is structured in a symbolic order, following a sound-sign order, in such a way that the dimension of logical mediation is completely present, in which - the other way round to Chomsky's theory - truth (and thus of course also lies) can play a decisive role.

For nature, and also sober linguistics, itself knows no truth. There may be terms like 'right' in the sense of appropriate and 'wrong' (negative, non-conforming), but not truth and lie. Even Gladwell's double agent did not lie when she said 'no', because she walked past her colleague as if he did not exist. To have seen something that does not exist - she could answer with 'no'. It would be disastrous for a double agent to lie, he would not be able to get out of the web of lies one day. Between her and her interviewer it was all about right or wrong. Right was being a perfect spy for the Americans. That's what she had to base all her statements on. Her downfall was that she could no longer talk totally past each other.

Later, when the Americans wanted to condemn her to death, she argued credibly that she had only come to spy because she felt sorry for the Cubans who had been bullied by America. That was the truth, but it was no longer, or never, asked. Compassion was neither right nor wrong. And so the secret service, like many scientists today, use - as Lacan continues to say - the 'preformed model of a correct and true answer' - and do not attach importance to the fight for the essence of language and for the fundamental truth’.3

They are in the mode of a preformed model of conversation, a fundamental communicative lie, in which it is all about right and wrong, although it is claimed that everyone is looking for the truth. Out of this talking past, this false-right, these not meaningless but worthless sentences, the truth is always circumvented, lied to or completely destroyed. The false right, the 'preformed', is a category in the figurative, in the imaginary, in the image-effecting, while the 'true answer' is a category in the symbolic, in the word-effecting. This is why in this book, with the concept of the 'vertical Ego', I try to create an institution that goes beyond these two categories by combining them in the closest possible way.

Sounds puzzling, but it is about nothing else than when, in the sixties and seventies of the last century, there was fierce debate about whether one could talk to the communists and communicate with them truthfully. Many people said that the Communists only wanted world revolution, and that they would only use a conversation for their own purposes, as a diversion, so to speak, and that the Soviet Union was behind the attack on the West (all this is the pictorial 'preformed'). And indeed, in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, the Russians were about to install missiles that would have reached far into America, but turned back when the President, at the time J. F. Kennedy, threatened with nuclear war, which was not the most authoritative language either. But peace was maintained, and so it was the right, truthful answer.

But there is a better combination of these basic categories, which will also be important for my further writing. A better combination, in that it can come from within each individual, for which I want to offer here a help to self-help with the 'vertical Ego', which will turn psychoanalysis somewhat the other way round. Lacan pointed out at a later point in time (congress from 7-9 July 1978) that Freud may have "invented a rather bizarre story called the unconscious".4 And further: "The unconscious is perhaps a Freudian delusion, it explains everything, but like a certain Karl Popper, philosopher, who has well expressed, that it explains too much". Explaining too much always leads to a suggestive substantiation of what is to be said and to exuberant attempts at meaning. Just as in the "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously", where a clear sense is expressed in only five words despite total distortion, the sense is also present in abundance in the unconscious, and one must have a good method to extract the really pictorial and at the same time worthwhile sense. The one where it shows itself, where it reveals itself, and where it speaks of itself and is not just talked about.

At the congress just mentioned, Lacan argued that psychoanalysis was not properly communicable, probably because of the lack of emphasis on the pictorial and the demonstrating. Psychoanalytic therapies can be carried out, but trained psychoanalysts themselves do not succeed in communicating Freud's pioneering deed in this substance and magnitude anew. "Psychoanalysis is not transmissible. It is quite annoying that every psychoanalyst is forced - because he must be forced - to reinvent psychoanalysis. . . It is necessary. . that every psychoanalyst reinvents how psychoanalysis can continue". This was a strict and very new and modern statement. For usually psychoanalytical training institutes keep their procedures and regulations conservative and as if they were locked in an academic coterie.

One speaks at a high intellectual level, i.e. specialized erected in the vertical, but only under itself, i.e. horizontally constricted. Classic case of a scholar-republic which is too narrowly specialized vertically and horizontally. Classic case of a scholarly republic which is too narrowly specialized vertically and horizontally. But this problem is well known to psychoanalysts. As in the treatment of the sick, the psychoanalyst in didactic analysis should be completely abstinent, i.e. he should not bring anything of his Id, Ego or superego into the conversation scene. "The boundary between the fantasy-relationship and the relationship-reality" must not be uncertain, which is impossible, however, especially in a training institute where the didactic analysis also takes place.5

Well, I will try a new invention in this book by pointing out the procedure of Analytic Psychocatharsis developed by me and also give a detailed description of it in the appendix. In this process the Ego is not erected in a specialized way, but broadly and thoroughly. Colleagues have told me that my method is very interesting, but not psychoanalysis, and certainly not a further development of it. But that is what happened to Lacan himself when he was excluded from the International Psychoanalytical Society. He was even accused of charlatanry, and in the meantime he has become the most widely received psychoanalyst after Freud. He compared his exclusion with the 'excommunicatio major', the papal, autocratic demonstration of power.

The scholars did not want to be deprived of their dictates of opinion and founded new institutes in ever new school directions, held scholastic congresses and allowed only the 'normopaths' (Bird, 1986), conservative, conformist contemporaries, for psychoanalytic training, and promoted the 'dull normals' (Kernberg, 1984), the 'stinking normals', who essentially had the amenities of the economic and social privileges of the upper middle class in mind".6 As psychoanalyst Thomä notes, in recent decades doctrinal analysis has been increasingly stylised into superanalysis (supertherapy).7 In a new issue of the journal PSYCHE this problem of psychoanalytic training institutes is discussed in detail. For it has long been known that the procedure for admission to psychoanalytic training is marked by too much bias and prejudice, by opacity and particularism.8 One has to go to three analysts selected by the Institute, who in the end do not tell you in any way what they think of you. Even at an advanced stage - even after hundreds of hours of teaching analysis and several years of this costly training - there are still cases of refusal to be admitted to the profession of analytical psychotherapist. The psychoanalyst G. Schneider therefore remarks that "it is in any case not inconceivable that ... a candidate takes legal action against his non-admission or failure to pass the final colloquium ...".9 The union that Freud founded for the benefit of mankind becomes a kind of inquisition.

For all these reasons, attempts are now being made to establish admission and formation criteria with high scientifically defined "categories of candidate competence".10 Self-awareness and awareness of others, regulation of emotions, conceptualization ability and many other aspects must be present in the candidate in the declaration cited by the author. The fact that one goes to lectures and seminars and completes a teaching analysis is no longer enough. Of course, it can no longer be like in the times of the founder S. Freud. To S. Bernfeld, who was neither a doctor nor a psychologist, Freud said: "When you know what transference and resistance is, start to treat". In fact, Bernfeld was then a teaching analyst for thirty years.

But the more intuitive, previous way of determining candidate competence is only further narrowed, censored and overloaded by such a highly intellectualized, multi-layered filtering method as the one mentioned above. The psychoanalyst Heenen-Wolf sees the cause of such regulations in the protracted transference processes.11 As is well known, the patient transfers to his therapist, but also the finished psychoanalyst transfers to other colleagues, meanings (feelings, impulses, thought contents etc.) from previous or other relationships. These transferences make sense, because interpretations of the motives and mental structures of the transferer can be drawn from them. However, they are mostly imbued with idealizations and personal idiosyncrasies, which ultimately have the same effect as clan formations or the crony clubs mentioned above.

I could not recognize all this at the beginning of my training. I only noticed the schoolmasterly, sometimes bourgeois and petty-minded manner of most of the members of the institute, when I would have wished for personalities radiating sovereignty. Therefore, after my training, I did not join any professsional association from the beginning of my education on. To become a double agency (to stand for psychoanalysis, but also to criticize it) it was enough to practise the profession for a few decades and to have time for other things, such as yoga and meditation.

Well, in this sense I will try to reinvent this book by pointing out the method of Analytic Psychocatharsis which I have developed and also give a detailed description of it in the appendix. In this procedure the Ego is not set up in a specialized way, but broadly and comprehensively. Colleagues have told me that my method is very interesting, but not psychoanalysis, and certainly not a further development of it. But that is what happened to Lacan himself when he was excluded from the International Psychoanalytical Society. He was even accused of charlatanry, and in the meantime he has become the most widely received psychoanalyst after Freud. He compared his exclusion with the 'excommunicatio major', the papal, autocratic demonstration of power.

This allowed me to formulate psychoanalysis in a different way, from its flip side, the more pictorial, imaginary side, while it is classically more attached to the worthy, symbolic side. Lacan already titled his seventeenth seminar "The Flip Side of Psychoanalysis", shifting it from its linguistically emphasized side to that of proper names, word games, geometric and topological peculiarities. In a similar manner, I have now, for example, turned the well-known listening "with equal attention" on the part of the analyst around to the side of the analysand, in that in Analytic Psychocatharsis it is now the analysand himself who listens with "equal attention". And that means to his own unconscious.

In my method the analysand, in this case the practitioner, the test person, must adopt this basic meditative attitude. As in psychoanalysis, it is a matter of listening half in a trance. However, he must not only listen to himself with "equal attention", he must also do what the psychoanalytic session is all about with "free associations", spontaneous, free ideas. As is well known, in psychoanalysis the patient (or client) brings his transference, i.e. he transfers meanings (feelings, impul-ses, etc.) from previous or other relationships to the therapist, who asks him to say spontaneously and freely whatever comes to his mind.