posted on Mar, 3 2015 @ 07:54 PM
Sigmund Freud was a much greater man then people recognize. He looked at people, not from the perspective of metaphysics, or how things seemed to be
from a cosmic perspective, but how human beings ACTED, and why they acted those ways.
Of course, as one recent book puts it, Sigmund Freud was totally permeated by 19th century Vienna culture. Sigmund Freuds world was a world which just
recently accepted Jews as equals. Freud grew up with a zest for becoming a "real man". As a man, Freud learned, unconsciously and relationally, how
to 'feel' about certain things. The magniloquent Freud could dress this feeling up in charismatic ways, but fundamentally, some of Freuds views just
wreaked with the patriarchal and misogynistic context he grew up within. It began with his Oedipal Complex, where the boy wants to be the father
(subject) because he realizes, of course, that his mother (the object) desires him. The man is able to take the mother (or penetrate her i.e phallus)
but the boy cannot.
This whole spiel is actually true. Most men in our society undergo this oedipal complex, which is to say (in less mythological language) the boy
separates from his mother (and the femininity, softness, intersubjectivity, and empathy she represents) in his quest to be like the father - which is
to say, the more lively, excited, and affectively alive father/agent of activity, who obviously seems more attractive to most children when they
experience the pleasure of subjectively alive emotions. This awareness arises from intersubjective relations between father (usually) and son. The
father enlivens the son in his way of being with him; if he produces a funny and expressive face, the babys mind will 'entrain' with it, and
reflect the same affect (this being mediated by 'mirror neuron' type systems in the brain). Eventually, the baby boy's growing right hemisphere
(which is much larger in the first 2 years) unconscious aligns along a specific attractor state (the pleasurable affects experienced with the father)
so that as complexity emerges the boy begins to associate - quite normally - submission with femininity and activity with masculinity. Of course,
these are cultural ways of being inherited from our patriarchal ancestors. It takes time to purge ourselves of these destructive impulses.
As a consequence of Freud's preoccupation with avoiding shame and feelings of vulnerability - the real source of human behavior - he articulated
psychoanalysis that skirted these subjects, whereas his student Sandor Ferenzi, obviously of a very different temperament, developed a more
intersubjective psychoanalysis that emphasized the role of relations with others in constructing intrapsychic dynamics.
Nevertheless, Freuds great insight was at looking at the human mind in a scientific way. By doing that, Freud discovered the "unconscious" - the
part of ourselves which influences how our attentions become oriented to the world around us. Unlike todays 'cognitive unconscious", Freuds
discovery was emotional - and how early affective experiences influence mental dynamics. He departed from this 1895 insight and went deep into the
void in theorizing about a womens development as a matter of 'penis envy', which, ironically, was probably true in that ultra-masculine society,
where woman, forced to experience themselves as vulnerable and needy, unconsciously sought relationships with men who would treat them that way - that
is, the strange human proclivity to pursue relationships that are destructive (even subtly so, as in relationships that prioritize men over women). So
Freud noted a real phenomenon. However, he mistook it for being some inbuilt genetically determiner characteristic, as opposed to something that is
intersubjectively agreed upon - unconsciously - by a collective of minds.
So what is the lesson of psychotherapy that I speak of? The lesson is this. Since about the 1950s, psychoanalysts have grown farther and farther away
from the 1 person psychology of Freud (which emphasized fantasies as the source of action) to a 2 (or more) person psychology which emphasized human
relationships (and the affects they produce in us) as the source of intrapsychic dynamics (object relations, and the fantasies they produce in us).
Imagine, if you will, you're a psychotherapist working with a difficult and particularly annoying patient. It's not that you want to feel this way,
but you just can't stop feeling that this patients voice get's tensed and overly self-aware when he speaks, actually causing you to 'tense' your
body as you listen to it. Now imagine that you are under the impression that you are 'neutral', and do not in fact have any influence on the process
of the therapy. Although you feel the feelings, and might even label him as 'irritating', you nonetheless insist that the mind can be 'neutral',
separate and authoritative in its relations with others. You do this by 'focusing' on interpretations. As it were, you're the scientist viewing the
'unconscious world' of the patient.
This is how psychotherapy was conducted in the 20th century. Nowadays, most psychotherapy is conducted around the concept of a 'intersubjective
field', where affects and emotions control responses and perceptions, and not the "language"; in fact, "talk therapy", is really "communication
therapy", the emphasis being on the implicit factors of facial expression, tone of voice and expressions of the body, and not the concepts of
Everyone knows, implicitly, that what determines their way of being with other people is how these people act towards them. How they greet them, look
at them when they're speaking, the energy and the 'feedback' they give, as vitality affects, as the look of interest on another face: these are the
things we yearn for, even though we seem to be involved with the meaning-contents of the things we speak about.
The Lesson of psychotherapy is the result of an experiment. Psychotherapists have been gathering information for how to best be with others. We've
learned from their experiences how people become influenced by other people; and how these 'meanings' are the result of countless interactions over
a life span, each affecting the other.