Are we all neurotic?

[coberst]

Are we all neurotic?

 

My reading tells me that we are all neurotic and some of us are so neurotic that we cannot function satisfactorily in normal society and are then considered to be mentally ill.

 

All humans repress aspects of their life that might cause anxiety. This repression is called neurosis. It is the constant conflict wherein the ego constantly struggles to hold down thoughts that will cause anxiety. Freud discovered the unconscious in life and there exists a constant conflict between the unconscious and the ego. The ego keeps that in the unconscious that can cause anxiety from becoming conscious.

 

Humans are the only species to be self conscious. We dread death and repress that dread because we cannot live with a constant consciousness of our mortality.

 

Conflict is the essential characteristic of humanness.

 

Regression to animal existence is one answer to the quest to transcend separateness. Wo/man can try to eliminate that which makes her human but also tortures her; s/he can discard reason and self-consciousness. What is noteworthy here is that if everybody does it, it ain’t fiction; anything everyone does is reality, even if it is a virtual reality. For most people, reason and reality is nothing more than public consensus. “One never ‘loses one’s mind’ when nobody else’s mind differs from one’s own.”

 

Regression to our animal form of instinctual behavior happens when we replace our lost animal instincts with our own fully developed symbolic instincts; we can then program our self to uncritically follow these culturally formed instincts without further consideration. We can then do like the elephant parade; we hold the tail of the one in front of us with our trunk and march in file without any other thoughts to disturb our tranquility.

 

“The great characteristic of our time is that we know everything important about human nature that there is to know. Yet never has there been an age in which so little knowledge is securely possessed, so little a part of common understanding. The reason is precisely the advance of specialization, the impossibility of making safe general statements, which has led to a general imbecility.”

 

The steel worker on the girder

learned not to look down, and does his work

And there are words we have learned

Not to look at,

Not to look for substance

Below them. But we are on the verge

Of vertigo.

George Oppen

 

Norman Brown informs us that to comprehend Freud one must understand “repression”. “In the new Freudian perspective, the essence of society is repression of the individual, the essence of the individual is repression of the self.”

 

Freud discovered the importance of repression when he discovered the meaning of the “mad” symptoms of the mentally deranged, plus the meaning of dreams, and thirdly the everyday happenings regarded as slips of the tongue, errors, and random thoughts. He concludes that dreams, mental derangements, and common every day errors (Freudian slips) have meaningful causes that can be explained. Meaningful is the key word here.

 

Since these psychic phenomena are unconscious we must accept that we have motivation to action with a purpose for which we are unconscious (involuntary purposes). This inner nature of which we are completely unaware leads to Freud’s definition of psychoanalysis as “nothing more than the discovery of the unconscious in mental life.”

 

Freud discovered that sapiens have unconscious causes which are hidden from her because they are disowned and hidden by the conscious self. The dynamic relationship between the unconscious and conscious life is a constant battle and psychoanalysis is a science of this mental conflict.

 

The rejection of an idea which is one’s very own and remains so is repression. The essence of repression is in the fact that the individual refuses to recognize this reality of her very own nature. This nature becomes evident when it erupts into consciousness only in dreams or neurotic symptoms or by slips of the tongue.

 

The unconscious is illuminated only when it is being repressed by the conscious mind. It is a process of psychic conflict. “We obtain our theory of the unconscious from the theory of repression.” Freud’s hypothesis of the repressed unconscious results from the conclusion that it is common to all humans. This is a phenomenon of everyday life; neurosis is common to all humans.

 

Quotes from Ernest Becker, Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction Denial of Death

[lawcat]

Are we all neurotic?

 

My reading tells me that we are all neurotic and some of us are so neurotic that we cannot function satisfactorily in normal society and are then considered to be mentally ill.

 

All humans repress aspects of their life that might cause anxiety. This repression is called neurosis. . . .

 

 

 

Norman Brown informs us that to comprehend Freud one must understand “repression”. “In the new Freudian perspective, the essence of society is repression of the individual, the essence of the individual is repression of the self.”

 

. . . The dynamic relationship between the unconscious and conscious life is a constant battle and psychoanalysis is a science of this mental conflict.

 

 

I like your post coberst. I agree that the effect of a society on an individual is repression. But I disagree with the second part. I believe that a purpose of self is the liberation of the individual from the moment they are born into society.

[Eric]

I think the problem is making a problem of worry. When we watch films wer'e expected to sympathise with characters, if they worry we understand why they worry, so we put it down to the context. Why should we pathologise some of the variety of emotions humans can have? Sure we can become dominated by worry for example. But so can we become dominated by happiness and miss the tragedies in the world that are ongoing.

 

I don't go for Freud so much, as it seems part of a judgemental approach where

i worry is a problem

ii because it is a problem, then there is some other thing, some sort of primal emotion/desire presumably, that is not 'confronted'

 

I don't think its right to worship happiness, and devalue other emotions.

 

In listening to music, watching a film, I think - confirms this.

 

 

:) :hyper: :eek_big: :hyper: :(

 

In Taoism the five emotions indicated here correspondent to the five different phases /elements of nature. This, I much prefer.

[coberst]

Drawing conclusions about the human psyche based upon untutored common sense is as justified as drawing conclusions about QM based upon untutored common sense.

[lawcat]

Drawing conclusions about the human psyche based upon untutored common sense is as justified as drawing conclusions about QM based upon untutored common sense.

 

This I disagree with. The whole jury system, and justice system, would fail. The legislative system would fail as well.

[Eric]

Quite agreed.

 

Why should taosim be untutored in the matter of mind?

 

Are psychologies that disagree with Freud untotored? Was the mind only 'known' by the time of Freud?

 

Is a non specialists opinion always less accurate?

 

 

Freud has his interpretation of particular dreams or comments made in particular circumstances, I don't see how these must be the necessary or only truth whether for psychologists/psychotherapists or laypeople.

 

I don't wish to discredit people for seeking help with problems of mind but I disagree with our being permeated by the dictums of mood x is problematic in itself, which I think follows from the modern (western) idea of 'mental illness'.

 

Anyway looking again at first post, it would seem to me that 'the neurotic' does better in Freudian terms, he experiences a sort of anxiety so should seemingly be more equipped to cope with that which is being psychologically deterred from. The Freudian interpretations seem to create a circular argument resulting in any disagreement with the Freudian analyst being a signal of such repression. Clearly there is no way in then for the idea that Freud, or any particular analysts interpretation, might be wrong*, because a rejection of it becomes a repression of an inevitably correct interpretation.

 

To me that is pure dogmatism

 

- Sorry for sounding dagmatic.

* I shouldn't expect this of a practising analyst I suppose. But I suspect other psychoanalysts might disagree with a particular interpretation.

[coberst]

Aristotle said that all men seek happiness. Freud said that the goal of the pleasure-principle is happiness. Man’s desire for happiness sets at odds to the reality-principle. It is the reality-principle that propels the world into tomorrow. Humans naturally seek what they wish but “reality imposes on human beings the necessity of renunciation of pleasures”.

 

Therein lay the rub and the rub is called repression.

 

Freud says that the whole edifice of psychoanalysis is constructed on the theory of repression—the essence of society is the repression of the individual--the essence of the individual is repression of him or her self—Freud’s theory is that the phenomena dreams, neurotic symptoms, and errors are caused—i.e. the principle of psychic determinism—they are meaningful because this means there is purpose or intention—“since the purport of these purposive expressions is generally unknown to the person whose purpose they express, Freud is driven to embrace the paradox that there are in a human being purposes of which he knows nothing, involuntary purpose”—i.e. unconscious ideas.

 

Neurosis is “the disease called man” Nietzsche. “Neurosis is an essential consequence of civilization or culture.” Brown

 

“Between “normality” and “abnormality” there is no qualitative but only a quantitative difference, based largely on the practical question of whether our neurosis is serious enough to incapacitate us for work.” The difference between “neurotic and healthy is only that the healthy have a socially useful form of neurosis.”

 

Freud defined psychoanalysis as “nothing more than discovery of the unconscious in mental life”—the other hypothesis is that “some unconscious ideas in a human being are incapable of becoming conscious to him in the ordinary way, because they are strenuously disowned and resisted by the conscious life”.

 

Norman Brown tells us that to comprehend Freud one must understand “repression”. “In the new Freudian perspective, the essence of society is repression of the individual, the essence of the individual is repression of the self.”

 

Freud discovered the importance of repression when he discovered the meaning of the “mad” symptoms of the mentally deranged, plus the meaning of dreams, and thirdly the everyday happenings regarded as slips of the tongue, errors, and random thoughts. He concludes that dreams, mental derangements, and common every day errors (Freudian slips) have meaningful causes that can be explained. Meaningful is the key word here.

 

Since these psychic phenomena are unconscious we must accept that we have motivation to action with a purpose for which we are unconscious (involuntary purposes). This inner nature of which we are completely unaware leads to Freud’s definition of psychoanalysis as “nothing more than the discovery of the unconscious in mental life.”

 

Freud discovered that sapiens have unconscious causes which are hidden from her because they are disowned and hidden by the conscious self. The dynamic relationship between the unconscious and conscious life is a constant battle and psychoanalysis is a science of this mental conflict.

 

The rejection of an idea which is one’s very own and remains so is repression. The essence of repression is in the fact that the individual refuses to recognize this reality of her very own nature. This nature becomes evident when it erupts into consciousness only in dreams or neurotic symptoms or by slips of the tongue.

 

The unconscious is illuminated only when it is being repressed by the conscious mind. It is a process of psychic conflict. “We obtain our theory of the unconscious from the theory of repression.” Freud’s hypothesis of the repressed unconscious results from the conclusion that it is common to all humans. This is a phenomenon of everyday life; neurosis is common to all humans.

 

Dreams are normal phenomena and being that the structure of dreams is common to neurotics and normal people the dream is also neurotic. “Between “normality” and “abnormality” there is no qualitative but only quantitative difference, based largely on the practical question of whether our neurosis is serious enough to incapacitate us for work…the doctrine of the universal neurosis of mankind is the psychoanalytical analogue of the theological doctrine of original sin.”

 

Quotes from “Life against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History” Norman O. Brown

[SidewalkCynic]

This I disagree with. The whole jury system, and justice system, would fail. The legislative system would fail as well.

What are the characteristics of such systems if they are failing?

 

Are you aware of any corruption in these systems in your society, and are you willing to describe that corruption in full detail for prosperity, or the better evolution of mankind, or for your just god?