11-04-2023, 05:11 AM
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The Devil in Charge
by Michael Tsarion 2022
The poor ego has a still harder time of it; it has to serve three harsh masters, and it has to do its best to reconcile the claims and demands of all three...The three tyrants are the external world, the superego, and the id - Sigmund Freud
“A devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other.” That’s the well-worn saying. The pair are not in fact on your shoulder, but are fixtures in your head.
Psychologists know them as the superego and conscience. However, normally we’re not aware that we are all split-personalities. We are not aware that our thinking and actions are supervised by two opposing voices. It would be good if we were informed about it. Our world would look very different.
For Sigmund Freud, the central issue was the origin and function of the superego. Regrettably, he wrote little about its goodly twin, the conscience. It was Carl Jung who took conscience seriously.
Both men understood that each person is in fact a dyad. A look at the all-too-physical brain, and its two hemispheres, confirms it as true.
However, we are also morally divided, and it’s time we understood what this means. The future of humankind depends upon it.
Freud’s remarks on the origin and nature of the superego are insightful and profound. The subject dominated his thought until the end of his life, and reappears in his final book on psychology, Civilization and its Discontents.
Sigmund Freud's final book on the subject of psychology explores whether or not civilization as we know it will survive and thrive or collapse and decay.
In chapter seven Freud brilliantly summarizes the story of the superego.
It grew out of the ego to allegedly guide and orient it. It’s over-arching duty is to attune the wayward amoral ego to society’s standards and customs. This process of acculturation begins at home with the parents - the twin peaks looming over the infant.
The infant takes birth in their world, and is imprisoned in it for many years. In most cases there’s little breathing space. Self-expression is curtailed, sometimes severerly. By seven years of age the superego rules supreme, as parent in the head. It overwrites the counsel of one’s conscience and sets itself up as the primary moral center. This has both good and bad effects on the psyche as a whole.
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Freud's basic model of the psyche correctly emphasizes the divide between conscious and unconscious hemispheres. Although the superego may not be the sole creator of the many divisions within the psyche, it is certainly that which monitors and reinforces them. As Freud said, it censors both the repressed content and the censor. It overwrites legitimate Selfhood and installs a Frankensteinean "subject" in its place. This is the root of all psychopathology. We're trained to fight to the death to preserve the imposter subject taken for the real Self. However, without continuous doses of external approval the former soon succumbs to neurosis and eventually falls apart.
The superego’s task is to furnish us with approval from the external world. Again, this kicks-off with our parents. In childhood we respond to parental approval and disapproval and learn quickly what is “right and wrong.” Or so we think. Not receiving their approval causes disabling bouts of anxiety.
Throughout our childhood we are conditioned by authority figures to unheed a deeper voice that really knows the difference between right and wrong, good and bad.
Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, something is out of tune - Carl Jung
In fact, no child is asked to do anything. It’s more a case of demand. Most parents lay down the law, leaving a child no choice in the matter. Leading child psychologists openly declare the actions of most mothers to be indistinguishable from those of tyrants. A close examination of the phenomenon of “motherhood” leaves us in no doubt about it.
Despite parental demands for conformity, most children secretly despise their parents, wishing them dead. It’s a wish that must be deftly camouflaged, and most children live in absolute terror of their parents finding out about the boiling rage harboured against them.
Psychologists emphasize that this rage, although taboo, is perfectly legitimate. They note that the suppression of legitimate emotions is the cause of a long list of neurotic tendencies. Again, it is the superego that works to make one feel guilty for expressing legitimate emotions such as rage.
This utter dread of discovery is the reason why we offer up pretences of care, concern and love for our parents. It’s the “love” of a slave and fear-ridden inmate. Indeed, subconscious hatred of parents is one of the main reasons for the function if not advent of the superego.
The superego is the agent of repression, ensuring that an oppressive status quo is maintained and undisturbed by volcanic feelings of rage and loathing, feelings which are all the more intense if parents are irrational, cruel and self-absorbed.
The superego suppresses feelings of hurt and rage so one can commit to a false inauthentic existence. It sees to it that the insubstantial "subject" supplants the true Self. Without the advent of the superego, the former could not thrive in place of the Self.
No wonder many people are depressed and suicidal. Depression is, as therapists know, rage spread thin. The superego prefers we live as depressives than openly express legitimate hurt and anger. Millions of people suffering from depression know nothing about the reasons for their plight.
Strangely, we are inclined to thank the superego for its dirty work of suppressing natural organic feelings and tarmacking the roads of conformity on which we willingly tread. We thank it for winning us the parental and social approval to which we are utterly addicted. Thanks superego for suppressing who I really am and molding me into what others prefer me to be…Thank you for allowing me to identify with the objects of my hatred!
Freud taught us that it wasn't God that imposed judgment on us and made us feel guilty when we stepped out of line. Instead, it was the superego - that idealized the concept of what a good person is supposed to be and do - given to us by our parents, that condemned us for what had been hitherto regarded as ungodly behavior - Tony Campolo
Squirming before the superego, tyrant in the head.
But the situation is much worse, says Freud. The prime-directive of the superego is to introject parental demands into our very being. The demands of hectoring parents are literally transplanted into consciousness. In this way external rules become the foundations of our so-called moral sensibility. Do as the parents say, and think yourself virtuous. Do othkerwise and think of yourself as delinquent and deserving of punishment. As Freud so brilliantly emphasized, this inner dynamic gives rise to religion, with the religious personality type basing their every action on the demands of the “lord above.” He is flooded with guilt should he think or do anything to displease God.
The whole mess starts in infancy. Step out of line with the dictates of parents and society, and the superego steps in to flood us with guilt.
We have now, thanks to Freud, identified two sources of pathology; the fear which arises should our rage be revealed to our overlords, and the torrents of guilt whipping us back into line with the dictates of tyrants.
Most of us are psychically poisoned by a cocktail of both fear and guilt, and crippled by angst over not getting approval. Ironically, by avoiding our internal state of decay, we are often driven to “fix” the world’s problems by turning to politics and charity, unaware that the observable state of external decay exists entirely because of our mutilated internal condition.
The unwanted child who on some level understands what’s going on, ends up being demonized as a delinquent. Such a type isn’t willing to suppress his distaste for hypocritical parents. He may not be able to conform and be as addicted to social approval as others around him. In psychological terms his superego is impared in some way. Consequently, he will be labelled a problem-child and penalized accordingly. Originally, Freudians commonly said that his superego is too weak to keep back the titanic forces of the evil id or unconscious. After Anna Freud’s time, however, this was no longer the go-to excuse. Her view was that delinquency is more a case of natural rebellion against a fiercely oppressive family and/or society. It’s not that the rebel's superego is weak, but that his conscience is strong. As a result, he’s bound to conform less and suffer more for his virtue and independence.
In this view, the delinquent child may be more authentic than his conformist counterpart. His bad behavior is a legitimate reaction against greater evil. He is deemed “uncivilzed,” but what is civilization after all, asks Freud.
In his close examination of the advent and function of the superego, Freud believes it all started with Thanatos, or so-called Death-Wish.
In simple terms this refers to aggression and violence. Aggression reigned supreme, says Freud, from the dawn of human history. It took a considerable reduction in aggression for the first primitive societies to emerge. The tribe was inconceivable without this change. What we know as culture had no chance of coming about without the sublimation and displacement of violence.
According to Freud, this change involves the introjection of aggression. Aggression and violence were slowly internalized instead of being continually projected outward toward others.
What means does civilization make use of to hold in check the aggressiveness that opposes it, to make it harmless, perhaps to get rid of it?..Something very curious, that we should never have guessed and that yet seems simple enough. The aggressiveness is interjected, internalized - Sigmund Freud
This reorientation of outer-directed violence gradually lessened tensions and conflicts between people, which in turn permitted a greater degree of cooperation. Hence people gradually found it more profitable to befriend each other, and combine wills in the pursuit of common goals. As Nietzsche stated, man found it greatly beneficial to combine his will-to-power with that of others. Doing so also lessened anxiety about being alone and self-reliant in an inclement universe.
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In short, says Freud, we enjoy the benefits of civilization because the death-wish is internalized.
However, Freud does not leave it here. Closely following Nietzsche, he explains the downside of the whole process of introjection. Aggression internalized isn’t aggression dissipated. The aggression has by no means changed its essential nature. Instead of being directed toward this or that person in the world, it is now redirected toward oneself.
Is anyone taking note of this? Is it really a wholesome process? Does it not eventually lead, asks Freud, to psychopathological tendencies?
The very conformity spoken of above and capacity for repression are unthinkable without redirected aggression.
As Freud shows, the so-called moral center within is born from internalized aggression. The superego emerges from the ego to tyrannically loom over it. It acts like the clipboard-wielding, jack-boot wearing demagogue, flooding one with guilt for the slightest infraction of the rules it lays down.
To gain supremacy it must suppress the true center of morality and virtue, and does so with society’s blessing. The superego is, after all, that which attunes us to the incessant demands of parents, to bring us a modicum of approval and relief.
We still retain the freedom to dissent and disobey the superego’s commands, but risk being drenched in guilt for doing so. We conclude that life is easier when we just give up and conform. Remember the fifth commandment - Honor your father and your mother? We suppress every trace of self-expression doing so, and allow ourselves to grow up as self-hating conformists. The world is full of prisoners of childhood, identifying with tyrants while deluding themselves that they can fix the world.
Perpetually surveilled by the all-seeing superego, we rarely notice the violence we do to ourselves by succumbing to its voice. Few alive today realize how much mental and physical pathology is due to the action of the superego. It is the cause of a massive dose of self-loathing, which in turn gives rise to myriad masochistic tendencies.
...we know of two sources for feelings of guilt: that arising from the dread of authority and the later one from the dread of the superego - Sigmund Freud
Victimized by a severe prohibitive superego, we come to hate ourselves. We irrationally despise our weakness and inability to fight back against the tyrant in the head. At which point a secondary form of violence arises to plague us, generated by the primary source of aggression - the supergo. Most people become numb after trying to resolve the vicious circle
As far as Freud was concerned, the influence of the superego (the death-wish turned within) accounts for most, if not all, forms of mental and physical illness. This includes schizophrenia, psychosis and multiple personality disorder.
It is certainly the reason for common-or-garden varieties of neurosis, delinquency and disease. It accounts for addiction, criminality, depression and suicide.
Without the introjection of violence and aggression we had no chance of establishing and developing civilization. But although the reduction of extroverted rage and animosity allowed cooperation with one-time enemies, our own psyches were turned into a battleground. The chaos of the world found a new home.
Freud’s worry in Civilization and its Dicontents was that internalized rage, and function of the superego, may lead to civilization’s collapse anyway. The world wars, and other incessant conflicts, clearly show us, says Freud, that aggression still haunts our world. But even the part that has been internalized may, in the long run, return to undermine what has been created. It’s a case of the “return of the repressed.”
The war-films, horror-films, obscenely violent video-games, true-crime cases, and all the rest of it, shows us that societies are permeated by sickening violence of one kind or another.
Civilization's survival now depends on the effective canalization of psychic violence. Hence the surfeit of violent films, games and pastimes, not to mention rising cases of actual criminality. The media has been instructed to produce an endless supply of sick crime-dramas and "real tv" series based on true-crime incidents. It amounts to a civilization held together by saftey-pins and sticky-tape.
Politically-correct, virtue-signalling governments now work overtime to make society “safe” and “risk-free.” Rules and laws are instigated and enforced to quell violence. Even a person’s thoughts of violence must be removed via medication.
These demagogues don’t realize that they’re still under the power of the superego, and that their effort to rehabilitate the world, is itself an act of violence and oppression.
No! The problem is not so easily understood and solved.
If Freud didn’t offer a coherent answer to the problem, Jung did. The solution is to raise the gain on the voice of conscience. It’s voice is quiet within us because the superego turns up its own volume to deafening levels.
This does not mean that the voice of the conscience isn’t there. It utters forth all the time. Our feeling of discontent is often the result of the conflict between the two voices. One voice demands we act and think in a certain way, and another voice demands the opposite. We live with the conflict every day, knowing nothing about what causes it.
Rationally, we’d all agree that what matters most is to have a functioning civilization in which all men peacefully cooperate with one another, in which the destructive will-to-power combines with others to work productively.
Everything we have, socially, came from the canalization of the death-wish. If there’s internal unrest, maybe that’s the way it has to be. We’ve got smart-ass psychologists to clean up the mess and explain it all away, right?
We’ve got spinner-racks full of self-help manuals, and a bevvy of life-improvement coaches and self-empowerment seminars. In worse-case scenarios, we’ve got institutions for compulsive antisocial types. There’s no need to stop everything and rethink society’s trajectory.
Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless. It enslaves him almost before he has tasted freedom. The 'ologies' will tell you how its done Theology calls it building a conscience or developing a spirit of selflessness. Psychology calls it the growth of the superego. Considering how long society has been at it, you'd expect a better job - B. F. Skinner
Freud’s final book reveals that he worried about humankind’s future. Can we continue directing violence toward the self? If so, why are there so many “discontents” in society? They have so much and yet they’re not satisfied. Wars still rage, and we’ve got many a sign of self-hatred, with all the body-piercing, tattooing, graffiti, gender-dysphoria and chronic drug-addiction.
The self-hating person leaks his inner violence back into society. But stop! That wasn’t the plan. Violence was internalized so society could flourish. Happy Days! Too bad we didn’t foresee the glitch. We didn’t expect our shiney world of plate-glass, concrete and steel to become stained by the return of the repressed.
What an overwhelming obstacle to civilization aggression must be if the defence against it can cause as much misery as aggression itself! - Sigmund Freud
We see from this that the future dystopia will be caused both by internalized and externalized violence.
When all is said and done, civilization as we know it, is, as Freud suspected, a rather temporary phenomenon after all.
We see that by not basing civilization’s elements on conscience, we’ve simply delayed catastrophe. Although governments instantiate ever more absurd short-term salves - such as political-correctness, etc - there’s no stopping the rot.
We also get to see something incredible about the voice in our heads. Born from violence and aggression, the superego became the tyrant within. It befriends us by helping us adjust to society’s standards. It helps us get “liked” by parents and friends. It makes us feel good about ourselves by reducing feelings of guilt, and in other ways awards us for “good” behavior. In this case “good” really means obedient.
But as great thinkers warned, being good is not necessarily the same as being virtuous.
The parents' failure to serve as models of disciplined self-restraint or to restrain the child does not mean that the child grows up without a superego. On the contrary, it encourages the development of a harsh and punitive superego based largely on archaic images of the parents, fused with grandiose self-images. Under these conditions, the superego consists of parental introjects instead of identifications. It holds up to the ego an exalted standard of fame and success and condemns it with savage ferocity when it falls short of that standard. Hence the oscillations of self-esteem so often associated with pathological narcissism - Christopher Lasch
Perceptive thinkers of a more nefarious mindset - the Marcusian-Fabians of the Frankfurt School and other antihuman orgs - read Freud and got clued-in right away. Civilization is not guaranteed. It can collapse at any time. What a devastating realization. What, they mused, can be done to hasten or slow the process?
Herbert Marcuse believed that disintergration and discontent can be temporarily suspended and alleviated by the continuous purveyance of “bread and circuses” (Huxley). The bitterness endured by inmates of the schizogenic society full of “one-dimensional” people is ameliorated by an endless supply of sweets. Bring on the sex, drugs, popcorn and twerking. Movies full of car-chases and love-scenes will do the trick. And it has worked wonders. The suckers and schmucks can’t wait for the next dose of mind-numbling sludge.
Fixate people at the level of the pleasure-principle and hey presto they eagerly suppress feelings of discontent and dissent. Better still, allow a certain amount of trendy dissent from those whose superegos convince them that social reform solves all.
The pleasure-addicted type doesn’t care to probe himself and find out what actually plagues his psyche. His self-loathing goes too deep for this. “Great!” say the Marcusans. Teach him to seek for external reasons for his discontented state and step back. Watch him robotically respond to our talismanic ideas and terms: injustice, inequality, imperialism, capitalism, patriarchy, oppression, etc.
Marcuse’s approach means we become party to the crime. By accepting the world of distraction and pleasure, we simply collaborate in the suppression of the conscience and exaltation of the superego. Psychologically, however, we simply exchange guilt for shame. Attuning with the directives of the superego puts us at loggerheads with the voice of the conscience. We inwardly cry for an end to the painful dilemma. We take any happy-pill promising to utterly suppress and silence the troublesome voice of conscience.
As said, the Marcusan tactic - effective as it is - only delays the inevitable. Despite glutting the populace with pleasure, the inner condition continues to decay.
Enter the Posthumanists, who, thanking Marcuse for buyng them time, work on perfecting Human 2.0. This creature is a reconceived and reconstructed entity who won’t suffer from pesky internal troubles. It won’t be burdened either with a superego or conscience. It is perfectly determined, programmed and adjusted. Its daily activities are highly efficient because it is unmolested by guilt, shame, fear or self-loathing. Its behavior is programmed and can’t possibly lead it into temptation or rebellion. Where religion failed, science succeeds.
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Wilhelm Reich's reading of Freud recognizes internalized violence as a massive problem. For Reich the introjected anger manifests as body-armoring which forms like a network of dams to reduce somatic feeling and sensitivity. This reduction in the flow of bioenergy (or orgone) leads to all sorts of physical and mental ailments. Soon the human being becomes so armored that he becomes functionally and structurally indistiguishable from an artificial cyborg. No feelings, emotions or problems...Utopia at last!
The Marcusan-Fabians grasped the essence of Freud’s great worry, and took it on themselves to achieve the impossible.
How can civilization continue without being undermined by leakage from acculturated but highly discontented inmates? How can violence once again be diverted? Firstly, by endless bread and circuses, and secondly by the advent of the “New Man.”
Jung also grasped Freud’s major concern and wisely urged us to heed the conscience instead of the superego, the ersatz moral center.
Identify the enemy in the head. It’s not that difficult because fortunately the superego’s techniques of control aren’t very sophisticated or varied. Once we get its scent its rotten devices are soon compromised. It wheels out the same old formula time and again. Hector, humiliate and flood one with guilt. The same spin-cycle over and over again. Its entire existence depends on mimicking attributes of the conscience. By satisfying a few basic needs - such as parental and social approval - it befriends us only to cement its draconian control over the psyche. When we notice the guilt-tripping and become familiar with the horrid scent within us of the real mind-parasite, we make way for a dramatic reversal in the balance of power.
Remembering that the soil from which the superego grows is aggression, enables us to identify its raison d’etre.
As far as Jung was concerned, this reversal (or enantiadromia) is essential if civilization’s future is to be safeguarded.
Fortunately, we always have within us - as the essence of essences - the freedom to make the choice one way or another. No amount of chicanery and belligerence from the superego changes this fundamental fact. We are always free to end its reign of terror whenever we wish.
Existential psychologists hold that each of us is in fact a trinity. Each person is a combination of the natural world (Umwelt), Society (Mitwelt) and Eightenwelt (Genuine Self). They stress the deep connections between the core Self and natural world.
The daimonic refers to the power of nature rather than the superego, and is beyond good and evil. Nor is it man's 'recall to himself' as Heidegger and later Fromm have argued, for its source lies in those realms where the self is rooted in natural forces which go beyond the self and are felt as the grasp of fate upon us. The daimonic arises from the ground of being rather than the self as such - Rollo May
What we know as conscience grows out of, and sits above, this natural order. It is the emanation of the moral universe and always guides us aright.
In short, it can be said that society gives rise to the inauthentic “subject,” whereas nature gives rise to the authentic Imperial Self. Therefore, what we know as the superego can be seen as the moral center of the former, while the conscience stands as the moral center of the latter. The former, the superego, is what it is largely by way of mimickry. It does not, however, serve a positive end. Self-expression is always crushed in favor of the will of others. From birth onward it’s a case of thou shalt not, with no reason given. We’d instantly rebel except for the threats of the superego which adjusts us to the abnormal world and makes a virtue out of submission. It also suppresses feelings of loathing toward the self for not rebelling against physical and psychic evil.
One look at the world shows us that most people eagerly conform to society’s standards and have absolutely no interest in genuine individuality. They’ve been offered the faux version and much prefer it. They strike a bargain with the superego and willingly let it rule over them. That this pact with the devil will one day bring civilization to a violent end doesn’t bother them overly. That’s for our holier-than-thou leaders to worry about.
Attuning to the world’s ways, and to the voice of the superego, inevitably means bowing down to external and internal authority, which in turn means ignoring and finally silencing the voice of conscience. The man who heeds only the voice of the predatory superego soon becomes an authority over others, usually his children, who often go on to repeat the obscene cycle. In the end we’re left to deal with a rotten hierarchy constructed by self-hating types. The death-wish reigns supreme once again.
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Surviving The Pathocalpyse
by Michael Tsarion 2022
From recorded observations, we do know that sociopaths, by various names, have existed in all kinds of societies, worldwide and throughout history - Martha Stout
Robert Hare, Harvey Checkley, Martha Stout, and other psychiatrists, tell us that one in twenty-five people are sociopathic personality types. Other experts think this is a low estimate. They are right.
This is because we’re talking about full-blown sociopaths. What about the person who is 75 percept sociopathic? What about the man or woman who is 50 percent deranged, or 15 percent? Add them all together and we’re way beyond a demographic of one in twenty-five.
Add to these the common-or-garden varieties of neurotic. Add the full-blown and/or borderline multiple-personalities, narcissists, obsessives, sado-masochists, paranoics, bipolars, schizophrenics and psychotics, etc. What’s left?
Strange is it not that most of us haven’t a clue what it means to be pathological? Most people can’t tell the difference between a neurotic and a psychotic.
…there are more sociopaths among us than people who suffer from the much-publicized disorder of anorexia, four times as many sociopaths as schizophrenics, and one hundred times as many sociopaths as people diagnosed with a known scourge such as colon cancer - Martha Stout
In my work on female psychology, I make mention of four other neurotic types: Schizoids, Depressives, Compulsives and Hysterics - the four riders of the pathocalypse.
A person can embody more than one of these pathologies, and every one of them is the Frankensteinean product of schizogenic domestic and social environments.
A hysteric can also be schizoid, while a depressive can embody compulsive traits. It’s not uncommon to find depressives with hysterical traits, and many compulsives are also somewhat schizoid.
Alarmingly, these odd combinations are also found in relationships. A depressive may find themselves attracted to a compulsive or even a hysteric, and vice versa. The reasons for this become clear once we know what distinguishes each of the four types.
Basically, the schizoid type is characteristically wooden, cynical, apprehensive and withdrawn. They are armored and incapable of emoting. Showing their feelings is considered a sign of weakness. Consequently, the schizoid develops an impenetrable shield against others who cannot reach them. This attitude and behavior does not stop them functioning efficiently in society. Indeed, the schizoid type works well in offices and corporations. He doesn’t let emotion get in the way of his “performance.” He actually becomes prideful about his professionalism and doesn’t like working with people who are relaxed, spontaneous, sloppy and expressive.
Many psychotherapists have pointed out that more and more patients exhibit schizoid features and the “typical” kind of psychic problem in our day is not hysteria, as it was in Freud's time, but the schizoid type that is to say, the problem of persons who are detached, unrelated, lacking in affect, tending towards depersonalization, and covering up their problems by means of intellectualizations and technical formulations…There is also plenty of evidence that the sense of isolation, the alienation of one's self from the world is suffered not only by people in pathological conditions, but by countless “normal” persons as well in our day - Rollo May
The compulsive type is similar in kind to the stiff schizoid. They may even get along quite well together. The compulsive is an obsessive type whose relations with external objects is controlling. He obsesses about the height of the grass in his garden. He obsesses about the wrinkles in the sheets, blankets and curtains, about the disorganized jars and cans in the cupboard and dining-table arrangement. He never drives over the speed-limit, and is always super-concerned with his appearance. Like the schizoid, he usually makes an exceptional employee. He prefers being in a superior position, and usually makes an obnoxious boss or headmaster. He’s attracted to jobs allowing him to regiment others. We find him working for the police, army or state. Disorder unnerves this type enormously. Even though everything is clean, neat and precise in their lives, there’s no love involved. Nothing owned is cherished for its own sake. If they have relationships of an intimate kind it is always with people who are submissive, dependent and weak.
When studying pathological types, we must at all times remember what Wilhelm Reich taught. For Reich, Lowen and Janov the Freudian superego is not strictly "in the head." In fact it makes greater sense to equate it with the structure of the body, particularly with the musculature. In bioenergetic terms, compulsives and schizoids are highly "armored," insensitive and frigid. In each of the four cases, and with neuroses in general, the person's subconscious desire is to avoid legitimate suffering.
The depressive is superficially a feeling-type and comes across as far more “human” than the previous two. They do not appear withdrawn and indifferent, and certainly do not focus on orderliness. They are, however, ridden with anxiety and are no lovers of independence and individuality. They often have difficulty taking control of their lives, experiencing bouts of deep doubt and insecurity. Their way out of anxiety is to depend almost entirely on other people. They are clingy and addicted to pleasing everyone. Although this trait actually makes them repulsive, they never twig it, and carry on servicing others for as long as they can. This does not mean that those on the receiving end deserve their attention. It’s not the important thing for the depressive. Their wish to “live through others,” is all that matters, not the other person’s actual needs or morality.
Those "entitled" types infesting society today get to be the loathsome creatures they are because of depressive mothers and fathers who worked to make them feel privileged and special. We see that the depressive is, therefore, a rather dangerous type. Their presence and influence prevents people taking personal responsibility and providing for themselves. The so-called "Welfare State" is due to the mindset of depressive personality types. The other three neurotic types are not naturally inclined to make life easy for others. Indeed, compulsives and schizoids get a great kick out of the suffering of others. They are often sado-masochists.
The hysteric is usually also gregarious and outgoing. They are the most friendly and carefree type of the four. One does not feel judged in their company, and they are generally a pleasure to be with, at least for a time. Eventually one sees their pathological side. They do not dwell on the past, and are ever on the go. Their need is for constant change and distraction, which the world provides in plenty. Regardless of what befalls the hysteric, there’s always tomorrow, and always something new and exciting around the corner. This is true even for relationships. The hysteric enters and exits relationships frequently. Each one is captivating, but only for a short period. A hysteric will not maintain a serious relationship for more than six to nine months. As they tire of an involvement, they will accuse the partner of being boring, unspontaneous, critical and controlling. Off they dart without a qualm. Like amoral adolescents they flaunt obligations and promises. They are the busiest and most extrovert of the types. By thirty they're exhausted with pleasuring themselves. It's downhill from there.
The hysteric and schizoid are often attracted to joining mass movements. They gravitate toward the Crowd. For the hysteric the Thugocracy is a source of ever-changing sensations, while for the schizoid it works to disguise their congenital fear of intimacy. He can say to himself …I’m in love with the cause and my comrades in arms…I’m a thorough-going humanitarian fighting poverty and injustice...
Hysterics and schizoids have another thing in common. Being the two most unproductive and uncreative types, they are motivated to appear other than they are. Joining the Crowd allows them to engage in an anxiety-lessening charade. Since they already wear a mask, it's not difficult for them to don another. It's actually easy for both types. Since self-deception is at the root of their neurosis, they must at all costs convince themselves that they are among the most creative and productive people alive.
Schizoids and hysterics are often plagiarizers who scavenge and reproduce the ideas and creations of others. Our world of endless cheap and banal reproductions wouldn't exist without their insidious industry. Genuine fakes are made by genuine fakes.
My task is to free man from man - Ayn Rand
The four pathological types are what they are primarily because of anxiety. We choose one of the types to shield ourselves against suffering and anxiety. Whatever we suffer at the hands of toxic parents inevitably sends us down a pathological path. Reality is sacrificed in the name of self-protection and escapism. The schizoid type becomes frozen and indifferent against experience. The compulsive compensates for feelings of inadequacy and weakness by robotic controlling behavior. Objects around him are taken in hand and forced into place. People in his life are also dominated and "organized" in a similar way.
The depressive escapes from anxiety into the lives of other people. All feeling is directed toward the needs of others that are not genuinely loved for their own sake. This device allows the depressive to forget about themselves and ignore their own feelings and needs. Their love for others is, therefore, insincere and shallow.
The hysteric escapes feelings of anxiety by perpetual extroversion. Life is just one big party. The world is full of tantalizing distractions and sensations. There's so much to do, so many places to go, there’s no time for stillness and contemplation. The hysteric is a social butterfly, always hip to what’s happening and turned on by the next big thing. They join the Crowd in their flight from themselves, that is from Selfhood. There’s no time for that, says the hysteric to themselves ...we’ve got to think of the minorities, single mothers and victims of inequality.
While hysterics and schizoids prefer political causes and mass movements, the average depressive personality type uses intimate relationships as their bolthole. They take their domestic and social duties toward friends and family to the extreme. They become obsessive fixers and planners, and are the most "selfless" of the four neurotic types. They often make their partners and friends embarassed and uncomfortable because of their over-attentive behavior. Others soon deduce that the depressive's care and concern is born from a total lack of self-interest and self-care. There are times when a depressive finds themselves attracted to a hysteric. In these cases the depressive's hope is that their buoyant, extroverted partner will "take them out of themselves." It usually works well enough for a time, although it often ends badly. They're bound to finally exhaust each others tolerance.
Since the Thugocracy is chock full of other hysterics and schizoids, the deranged ideas in one’s mind get amplified. It’s a good feeling and very addictive. What we know as “Socialism,” is attractive to pathological types convinced they're changing the world for the better. Any sane person can see it's far from the case. The pathological type brings ruin to everything they touch and everyone they contact.
Fortunately, we are now in an age when we can, if we so desire, to get a handle on pathological people - these constitutional moral inferiors. We can learn to pick them out and thereby protect ourselves from their baneful influence.
However, we must remember that we each embody one or more of the four traits. No one on earth is free from it. There are compulsive, schizoid, depressive and hysteric aspects to each and every personality, and everyone seeks in irrational ways to escape suffering and anxiety. After a little study, each of us can learn to discern pathological tendencies within ourselves. It helps to do the same with others.
THE SCHIZOID
My childhood needs were not met, so I ceased feeling altogether. I’m strong and superior because I never reveal my needs and desires to anyone. I abjure intimacy and harden myself against the false love of others.
THE DEPRESSIVE
My needy, infantile parents couldn’t take care of themselves. I ended up looking after them, and was valued and praised for doing so. I carry on servicing others whether they deserve it or not and by doing so I forget about my own needs and desires.
THE COMPULSIVE
I was hurt when young. My caregivers were sloppy, disorganized and frazzled. Everything else was prioritized and I was neglected. I felt unwanted, unnoticed and useless. Therefore, I make sure everything is properly sorted and arranged in a precise manner. Life needs to be organized and controlled. There can be no spontaneity, mutability, dirt and disarray. Inanimate objects submit to my will, and I feel good when everything is neat, clean and in perefect order. I Iove the smell of napalm in the morning.
THE HYSTERIC
My parents were self-absorbed hypocrites who treated me as a toy to play with. I learned to be sunny, playful and extroverted. It gets me the attention I crave. It helps me avoid looking deeply into myself. Being on display and admired by others is what it’s all about. One must live for experience and fortunately the world provides endless distraction. I never need confront my inner rage and pain. Let the good times roll.
Hey doc, if it weren't for reality, I'd be just fine - Scott Peck (citing a patient's complaint)
Sanity is hard won. It requires discerning the neurotic or pathological traits within us, and fathoming why they exist. This in turn may mean breaking the fifth commandment, and not automatically forgiving abusive mothers and fathers whose demagoguery (or Adultism) made us what we are.
Anxiety is a basal mood and state. It need not have an obvious external cause. Most of one's life is spent suppressing and evading it. The four neurotic types mentioned here come about as attempts to alleviate anxiety. Observing society today confirms that the preferred method of escape is via compulsive and schizoid patterns of behavior. These types are found in plenty as one ascends the corporate ladder. In everyday life we are more likely to encounter depressives and hysterics. The average masochist irrationally escapes anxiety by being hurt (punished for supposed badness), whereas sadists escape anxiety by inflicting pain on others, thinking to themselves that as long as I see others suffering, I must be okay. In general, psychotics punish others, while neurotics punish themselves
…intrinsic weakness and helplessness toward a world perceived as potentially hostile and dangerous - Karen Horney (on neurosis)
As the ancient Vedic sages said, Self-realization is necessary before God-realization. In other words, one must gently analyse themselves and identify those traits born from one’s evasion of legitimate feeling. We must confront and defy any and all cop-outs, beliefs or paradigms preventing us from committing to this “holy work.” Only the man who heroically faces his own psychology and typology is in a position to change the world for the better. He does not need the assistance of others, and as a hygienic, sovereign being, he joins no crowds.
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The Devil in Charge
by Michael Tsarion 2022
The poor ego has a still harder time of it; it has to serve three harsh masters, and it has to do its best to reconcile the claims and demands of all three...The three tyrants are the external world, the superego, and the id - Sigmund Freud
“A devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other.” That’s the well-worn saying. The pair are not in fact on your shoulder, but are fixtures in your head.
Psychologists know them as the superego and conscience. However, normally we’re not aware that we are all split-personalities. We are not aware that our thinking and actions are supervised by two opposing voices. It would be good if we were informed about it. Our world would look very different.
For Sigmund Freud, the central issue was the origin and function of the superego. Regrettably, he wrote little about its goodly twin, the conscience. It was Carl Jung who took conscience seriously.
Both men understood that each person is in fact a dyad. A look at the all-too-physical brain, and its two hemispheres, confirms it as true.
However, we are also morally divided, and it’s time we understood what this means. The future of humankind depends upon it.
Freud’s remarks on the origin and nature of the superego are insightful and profound. The subject dominated his thought until the end of his life, and reappears in his final book on psychology, Civilization and its Discontents.
Sigmund Freud's final book on the subject of psychology explores whether or not civilization as we know it will survive and thrive or collapse and decay.
In chapter seven Freud brilliantly summarizes the story of the superego.
It grew out of the ego to allegedly guide and orient it. It’s over-arching duty is to attune the wayward amoral ego to society’s standards and customs. This process of acculturation begins at home with the parents - the twin peaks looming over the infant.
The infant takes birth in their world, and is imprisoned in it for many years. In most cases there’s little breathing space. Self-expression is curtailed, sometimes severerly. By seven years of age the superego rules supreme, as parent in the head. It overwrites the counsel of one’s conscience and sets itself up as the primary moral center. This has both good and bad effects on the psyche as a whole.
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Freud's basic model of the psyche correctly emphasizes the divide between conscious and unconscious hemispheres. Although the superego may not be the sole creator of the many divisions within the psyche, it is certainly that which monitors and reinforces them. As Freud said, it censors both the repressed content and the censor. It overwrites legitimate Selfhood and installs a Frankensteinean "subject" in its place. This is the root of all psychopathology. We're trained to fight to the death to preserve the imposter subject taken for the real Self. However, without continuous doses of external approval the former soon succumbs to neurosis and eventually falls apart.
The superego’s task is to furnish us with approval from the external world. Again, this kicks-off with our parents. In childhood we respond to parental approval and disapproval and learn quickly what is “right and wrong.” Or so we think. Not receiving their approval causes disabling bouts of anxiety.
Throughout our childhood we are conditioned by authority figures to unheed a deeper voice that really knows the difference between right and wrong, good and bad.
Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, something is out of tune - Carl Jung
In fact, no child is asked to do anything. It’s more a case of demand. Most parents lay down the law, leaving a child no choice in the matter. Leading child psychologists openly declare the actions of most mothers to be indistinguishable from those of tyrants. A close examination of the phenomenon of “motherhood” leaves us in no doubt about it.
Despite parental demands for conformity, most children secretly despise their parents, wishing them dead. It’s a wish that must be deftly camouflaged, and most children live in absolute terror of their parents finding out about the boiling rage harboured against them.
Psychologists emphasize that this rage, although taboo, is perfectly legitimate. They note that the suppression of legitimate emotions is the cause of a long list of neurotic tendencies. Again, it is the superego that works to make one feel guilty for expressing legitimate emotions such as rage.
This utter dread of discovery is the reason why we offer up pretences of care, concern and love for our parents. It’s the “love” of a slave and fear-ridden inmate. Indeed, subconscious hatred of parents is one of the main reasons for the function if not advent of the superego.
The superego is the agent of repression, ensuring that an oppressive status quo is maintained and undisturbed by volcanic feelings of rage and loathing, feelings which are all the more intense if parents are irrational, cruel and self-absorbed.
The superego suppresses feelings of hurt and rage so one can commit to a false inauthentic existence. It sees to it that the insubstantial "subject" supplants the true Self. Without the advent of the superego, the former could not thrive in place of the Self.
No wonder many people are depressed and suicidal. Depression is, as therapists know, rage spread thin. The superego prefers we live as depressives than openly express legitimate hurt and anger. Millions of people suffering from depression know nothing about the reasons for their plight.
Strangely, we are inclined to thank the superego for its dirty work of suppressing natural organic feelings and tarmacking the roads of conformity on which we willingly tread. We thank it for winning us the parental and social approval to which we are utterly addicted. Thanks superego for suppressing who I really am and molding me into what others prefer me to be…Thank you for allowing me to identify with the objects of my hatred!
Freud taught us that it wasn't God that imposed judgment on us and made us feel guilty when we stepped out of line. Instead, it was the superego - that idealized the concept of what a good person is supposed to be and do - given to us by our parents, that condemned us for what had been hitherto regarded as ungodly behavior - Tony Campolo
Squirming before the superego, tyrant in the head.
But the situation is much worse, says Freud. The prime-directive of the superego is to introject parental demands into our very being. The demands of hectoring parents are literally transplanted into consciousness. In this way external rules become the foundations of our so-called moral sensibility. Do as the parents say, and think yourself virtuous. Do othkerwise and think of yourself as delinquent and deserving of punishment. As Freud so brilliantly emphasized, this inner dynamic gives rise to religion, with the religious personality type basing their every action on the demands of the “lord above.” He is flooded with guilt should he think or do anything to displease God.
The whole mess starts in infancy. Step out of line with the dictates of parents and society, and the superego steps in to flood us with guilt.
We have now, thanks to Freud, identified two sources of pathology; the fear which arises should our rage be revealed to our overlords, and the torrents of guilt whipping us back into line with the dictates of tyrants.
Most of us are psychically poisoned by a cocktail of both fear and guilt, and crippled by angst over not getting approval. Ironically, by avoiding our internal state of decay, we are often driven to “fix” the world’s problems by turning to politics and charity, unaware that the observable state of external decay exists entirely because of our mutilated internal condition.
The unwanted child who on some level understands what’s going on, ends up being demonized as a delinquent. Such a type isn’t willing to suppress his distaste for hypocritical parents. He may not be able to conform and be as addicted to social approval as others around him. In psychological terms his superego is impared in some way. Consequently, he will be labelled a problem-child and penalized accordingly. Originally, Freudians commonly said that his superego is too weak to keep back the titanic forces of the evil id or unconscious. After Anna Freud’s time, however, this was no longer the go-to excuse. Her view was that delinquency is more a case of natural rebellion against a fiercely oppressive family and/or society. It’s not that the rebel's superego is weak, but that his conscience is strong. As a result, he’s bound to conform less and suffer more for his virtue and independence.
In this view, the delinquent child may be more authentic than his conformist counterpart. His bad behavior is a legitimate reaction against greater evil. He is deemed “uncivilzed,” but what is civilization after all, asks Freud.
In his close examination of the advent and function of the superego, Freud believes it all started with Thanatos, or so-called Death-Wish.
In simple terms this refers to aggression and violence. Aggression reigned supreme, says Freud, from the dawn of human history. It took a considerable reduction in aggression for the first primitive societies to emerge. The tribe was inconceivable without this change. What we know as culture had no chance of coming about without the sublimation and displacement of violence.
According to Freud, this change involves the introjection of aggression. Aggression and violence were slowly internalized instead of being continually projected outward toward others.
What means does civilization make use of to hold in check the aggressiveness that opposes it, to make it harmless, perhaps to get rid of it?..Something very curious, that we should never have guessed and that yet seems simple enough. The aggressiveness is interjected, internalized - Sigmund Freud
This reorientation of outer-directed violence gradually lessened tensions and conflicts between people, which in turn permitted a greater degree of cooperation. Hence people gradually found it more profitable to befriend each other, and combine wills in the pursuit of common goals. As Nietzsche stated, man found it greatly beneficial to combine his will-to-power with that of others. Doing so also lessened anxiety about being alone and self-reliant in an inclement universe.
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In short, says Freud, we enjoy the benefits of civilization because the death-wish is internalized.
However, Freud does not leave it here. Closely following Nietzsche, he explains the downside of the whole process of introjection. Aggression internalized isn’t aggression dissipated. The aggression has by no means changed its essential nature. Instead of being directed toward this or that person in the world, it is now redirected toward oneself.
Is anyone taking note of this? Is it really a wholesome process? Does it not eventually lead, asks Freud, to psychopathological tendencies?
The very conformity spoken of above and capacity for repression are unthinkable without redirected aggression.
As Freud shows, the so-called moral center within is born from internalized aggression. The superego emerges from the ego to tyrannically loom over it. It acts like the clipboard-wielding, jack-boot wearing demagogue, flooding one with guilt for the slightest infraction of the rules it lays down.
To gain supremacy it must suppress the true center of morality and virtue, and does so with society’s blessing. The superego is, after all, that which attunes us to the incessant demands of parents, to bring us a modicum of approval and relief.
We still retain the freedom to dissent and disobey the superego’s commands, but risk being drenched in guilt for doing so. We conclude that life is easier when we just give up and conform. Remember the fifth commandment - Honor your father and your mother? We suppress every trace of self-expression doing so, and allow ourselves to grow up as self-hating conformists. The world is full of prisoners of childhood, identifying with tyrants while deluding themselves that they can fix the world.
Perpetually surveilled by the all-seeing superego, we rarely notice the violence we do to ourselves by succumbing to its voice. Few alive today realize how much mental and physical pathology is due to the action of the superego. It is the cause of a massive dose of self-loathing, which in turn gives rise to myriad masochistic tendencies.
...we know of two sources for feelings of guilt: that arising from the dread of authority and the later one from the dread of the superego - Sigmund Freud
Victimized by a severe prohibitive superego, we come to hate ourselves. We irrationally despise our weakness and inability to fight back against the tyrant in the head. At which point a secondary form of violence arises to plague us, generated by the primary source of aggression - the supergo. Most people become numb after trying to resolve the vicious circle
As far as Freud was concerned, the influence of the superego (the death-wish turned within) accounts for most, if not all, forms of mental and physical illness. This includes schizophrenia, psychosis and multiple personality disorder.
It is certainly the reason for common-or-garden varieties of neurosis, delinquency and disease. It accounts for addiction, criminality, depression and suicide.
Without the introjection of violence and aggression we had no chance of establishing and developing civilization. But although the reduction of extroverted rage and animosity allowed cooperation with one-time enemies, our own psyches were turned into a battleground. The chaos of the world found a new home.
Freud’s worry in Civilization and its Dicontents was that internalized rage, and function of the superego, may lead to civilization’s collapse anyway. The world wars, and other incessant conflicts, clearly show us, says Freud, that aggression still haunts our world. But even the part that has been internalized may, in the long run, return to undermine what has been created. It’s a case of the “return of the repressed.”
The war-films, horror-films, obscenely violent video-games, true-crime cases, and all the rest of it, shows us that societies are permeated by sickening violence of one kind or another.
Civilization's survival now depends on the effective canalization of psychic violence. Hence the surfeit of violent films, games and pastimes, not to mention rising cases of actual criminality. The media has been instructed to produce an endless supply of sick crime-dramas and "real tv" series based on true-crime incidents. It amounts to a civilization held together by saftey-pins and sticky-tape.
Politically-correct, virtue-signalling governments now work overtime to make society “safe” and “risk-free.” Rules and laws are instigated and enforced to quell violence. Even a person’s thoughts of violence must be removed via medication.
These demagogues don’t realize that they’re still under the power of the superego, and that their effort to rehabilitate the world, is itself an act of violence and oppression.
No! The problem is not so easily understood and solved.
If Freud didn’t offer a coherent answer to the problem, Jung did. The solution is to raise the gain on the voice of conscience. It’s voice is quiet within us because the superego turns up its own volume to deafening levels.
This does not mean that the voice of the conscience isn’t there. It utters forth all the time. Our feeling of discontent is often the result of the conflict between the two voices. One voice demands we act and think in a certain way, and another voice demands the opposite. We live with the conflict every day, knowing nothing about what causes it.
Rationally, we’d all agree that what matters most is to have a functioning civilization in which all men peacefully cooperate with one another, in which the destructive will-to-power combines with others to work productively.
Everything we have, socially, came from the canalization of the death-wish. If there’s internal unrest, maybe that’s the way it has to be. We’ve got smart-ass psychologists to clean up the mess and explain it all away, right?
We’ve got spinner-racks full of self-help manuals, and a bevvy of life-improvement coaches and self-empowerment seminars. In worse-case scenarios, we’ve got institutions for compulsive antisocial types. There’s no need to stop everything and rethink society’s trajectory.
Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless. It enslaves him almost before he has tasted freedom. The 'ologies' will tell you how its done Theology calls it building a conscience or developing a spirit of selflessness. Psychology calls it the growth of the superego. Considering how long society has been at it, you'd expect a better job - B. F. Skinner
Freud’s final book reveals that he worried about humankind’s future. Can we continue directing violence toward the self? If so, why are there so many “discontents” in society? They have so much and yet they’re not satisfied. Wars still rage, and we’ve got many a sign of self-hatred, with all the body-piercing, tattooing, graffiti, gender-dysphoria and chronic drug-addiction.
The self-hating person leaks his inner violence back into society. But stop! That wasn’t the plan. Violence was internalized so society could flourish. Happy Days! Too bad we didn’t foresee the glitch. We didn’t expect our shiney world of plate-glass, concrete and steel to become stained by the return of the repressed.
What an overwhelming obstacle to civilization aggression must be if the defence against it can cause as much misery as aggression itself! - Sigmund Freud
We see from this that the future dystopia will be caused both by internalized and externalized violence.
When all is said and done, civilization as we know it, is, as Freud suspected, a rather temporary phenomenon after all.
We see that by not basing civilization’s elements on conscience, we’ve simply delayed catastrophe. Although governments instantiate ever more absurd short-term salves - such as political-correctness, etc - there’s no stopping the rot.
We also get to see something incredible about the voice in our heads. Born from violence and aggression, the superego became the tyrant within. It befriends us by helping us adjust to society’s standards. It helps us get “liked” by parents and friends. It makes us feel good about ourselves by reducing feelings of guilt, and in other ways awards us for “good” behavior. In this case “good” really means obedient.
But as great thinkers warned, being good is not necessarily the same as being virtuous.
The parents' failure to serve as models of disciplined self-restraint or to restrain the child does not mean that the child grows up without a superego. On the contrary, it encourages the development of a harsh and punitive superego based largely on archaic images of the parents, fused with grandiose self-images. Under these conditions, the superego consists of parental introjects instead of identifications. It holds up to the ego an exalted standard of fame and success and condemns it with savage ferocity when it falls short of that standard. Hence the oscillations of self-esteem so often associated with pathological narcissism - Christopher Lasch
Perceptive thinkers of a more nefarious mindset - the Marcusian-Fabians of the Frankfurt School and other antihuman orgs - read Freud and got clued-in right away. Civilization is not guaranteed. It can collapse at any time. What a devastating realization. What, they mused, can be done to hasten or slow the process?
Herbert Marcuse believed that disintergration and discontent can be temporarily suspended and alleviated by the continuous purveyance of “bread and circuses” (Huxley). The bitterness endured by inmates of the schizogenic society full of “one-dimensional” people is ameliorated by an endless supply of sweets. Bring on the sex, drugs, popcorn and twerking. Movies full of car-chases and love-scenes will do the trick. And it has worked wonders. The suckers and schmucks can’t wait for the next dose of mind-numbling sludge.
Fixate people at the level of the pleasure-principle and hey presto they eagerly suppress feelings of discontent and dissent. Better still, allow a certain amount of trendy dissent from those whose superegos convince them that social reform solves all.
The pleasure-addicted type doesn’t care to probe himself and find out what actually plagues his psyche. His self-loathing goes too deep for this. “Great!” say the Marcusans. Teach him to seek for external reasons for his discontented state and step back. Watch him robotically respond to our talismanic ideas and terms: injustice, inequality, imperialism, capitalism, patriarchy, oppression, etc.
Marcuse’s approach means we become party to the crime. By accepting the world of distraction and pleasure, we simply collaborate in the suppression of the conscience and exaltation of the superego. Psychologically, however, we simply exchange guilt for shame. Attuning with the directives of the superego puts us at loggerheads with the voice of the conscience. We inwardly cry for an end to the painful dilemma. We take any happy-pill promising to utterly suppress and silence the troublesome voice of conscience.
As said, the Marcusan tactic - effective as it is - only delays the inevitable. Despite glutting the populace with pleasure, the inner condition continues to decay.
Enter the Posthumanists, who, thanking Marcuse for buyng them time, work on perfecting Human 2.0. This creature is a reconceived and reconstructed entity who won’t suffer from pesky internal troubles. It won’t be burdened either with a superego or conscience. It is perfectly determined, programmed and adjusted. Its daily activities are highly efficient because it is unmolested by guilt, shame, fear or self-loathing. Its behavior is programmed and can’t possibly lead it into temptation or rebellion. Where religion failed, science succeeds.
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Wilhelm Reich's reading of Freud recognizes internalized violence as a massive problem. For Reich the introjected anger manifests as body-armoring which forms like a network of dams to reduce somatic feeling and sensitivity. This reduction in the flow of bioenergy (or orgone) leads to all sorts of physical and mental ailments. Soon the human being becomes so armored that he becomes functionally and structurally indistiguishable from an artificial cyborg. No feelings, emotions or problems...Utopia at last!
The Marcusan-Fabians grasped the essence of Freud’s great worry, and took it on themselves to achieve the impossible.
How can civilization continue without being undermined by leakage from acculturated but highly discontented inmates? How can violence once again be diverted? Firstly, by endless bread and circuses, and secondly by the advent of the “New Man.”
Jung also grasped Freud’s major concern and wisely urged us to heed the conscience instead of the superego, the ersatz moral center.
Identify the enemy in the head. It’s not that difficult because fortunately the superego’s techniques of control aren’t very sophisticated or varied. Once we get its scent its rotten devices are soon compromised. It wheels out the same old formula time and again. Hector, humiliate and flood one with guilt. The same spin-cycle over and over again. Its entire existence depends on mimicking attributes of the conscience. By satisfying a few basic needs - such as parental and social approval - it befriends us only to cement its draconian control over the psyche. When we notice the guilt-tripping and become familiar with the horrid scent within us of the real mind-parasite, we make way for a dramatic reversal in the balance of power.
Remembering that the soil from which the superego grows is aggression, enables us to identify its raison d’etre.
As far as Jung was concerned, this reversal (or enantiadromia) is essential if civilization’s future is to be safeguarded.
Fortunately, we always have within us - as the essence of essences - the freedom to make the choice one way or another. No amount of chicanery and belligerence from the superego changes this fundamental fact. We are always free to end its reign of terror whenever we wish.
Existential psychologists hold that each of us is in fact a trinity. Each person is a combination of the natural world (Umwelt), Society (Mitwelt) and Eightenwelt (Genuine Self). They stress the deep connections between the core Self and natural world.
The daimonic refers to the power of nature rather than the superego, and is beyond good and evil. Nor is it man's 'recall to himself' as Heidegger and later Fromm have argued, for its source lies in those realms where the self is rooted in natural forces which go beyond the self and are felt as the grasp of fate upon us. The daimonic arises from the ground of being rather than the self as such - Rollo May
What we know as conscience grows out of, and sits above, this natural order. It is the emanation of the moral universe and always guides us aright.
In short, it can be said that society gives rise to the inauthentic “subject,” whereas nature gives rise to the authentic Imperial Self. Therefore, what we know as the superego can be seen as the moral center of the former, while the conscience stands as the moral center of the latter. The former, the superego, is what it is largely by way of mimickry. It does not, however, serve a positive end. Self-expression is always crushed in favor of the will of others. From birth onward it’s a case of thou shalt not, with no reason given. We’d instantly rebel except for the threats of the superego which adjusts us to the abnormal world and makes a virtue out of submission. It also suppresses feelings of loathing toward the self for not rebelling against physical and psychic evil.
One look at the world shows us that most people eagerly conform to society’s standards and have absolutely no interest in genuine individuality. They’ve been offered the faux version and much prefer it. They strike a bargain with the superego and willingly let it rule over them. That this pact with the devil will one day bring civilization to a violent end doesn’t bother them overly. That’s for our holier-than-thou leaders to worry about.
Attuning to the world’s ways, and to the voice of the superego, inevitably means bowing down to external and internal authority, which in turn means ignoring and finally silencing the voice of conscience. The man who heeds only the voice of the predatory superego soon becomes an authority over others, usually his children, who often go on to repeat the obscene cycle. In the end we’re left to deal with a rotten hierarchy constructed by self-hating types. The death-wish reigns supreme once again.
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Surviving The Pathocalpyse
by Michael Tsarion 2022
From recorded observations, we do know that sociopaths, by various names, have existed in all kinds of societies, worldwide and throughout history - Martha Stout
Robert Hare, Harvey Checkley, Martha Stout, and other psychiatrists, tell us that one in twenty-five people are sociopathic personality types. Other experts think this is a low estimate. They are right.
This is because we’re talking about full-blown sociopaths. What about the person who is 75 percept sociopathic? What about the man or woman who is 50 percent deranged, or 15 percent? Add them all together and we’re way beyond a demographic of one in twenty-five.
Add to these the common-or-garden varieties of neurotic. Add the full-blown and/or borderline multiple-personalities, narcissists, obsessives, sado-masochists, paranoics, bipolars, schizophrenics and psychotics, etc. What’s left?
Strange is it not that most of us haven’t a clue what it means to be pathological? Most people can’t tell the difference between a neurotic and a psychotic.
…there are more sociopaths among us than people who suffer from the much-publicized disorder of anorexia, four times as many sociopaths as schizophrenics, and one hundred times as many sociopaths as people diagnosed with a known scourge such as colon cancer - Martha Stout
In my work on female psychology, I make mention of four other neurotic types: Schizoids, Depressives, Compulsives and Hysterics - the four riders of the pathocalypse.
A person can embody more than one of these pathologies, and every one of them is the Frankensteinean product of schizogenic domestic and social environments.
A hysteric can also be schizoid, while a depressive can embody compulsive traits. It’s not uncommon to find depressives with hysterical traits, and many compulsives are also somewhat schizoid.
Alarmingly, these odd combinations are also found in relationships. A depressive may find themselves attracted to a compulsive or even a hysteric, and vice versa. The reasons for this become clear once we know what distinguishes each of the four types.
Basically, the schizoid type is characteristically wooden, cynical, apprehensive and withdrawn. They are armored and incapable of emoting. Showing their feelings is considered a sign of weakness. Consequently, the schizoid develops an impenetrable shield against others who cannot reach them. This attitude and behavior does not stop them functioning efficiently in society. Indeed, the schizoid type works well in offices and corporations. He doesn’t let emotion get in the way of his “performance.” He actually becomes prideful about his professionalism and doesn’t like working with people who are relaxed, spontaneous, sloppy and expressive.
Many psychotherapists have pointed out that more and more patients exhibit schizoid features and the “typical” kind of psychic problem in our day is not hysteria, as it was in Freud's time, but the schizoid type that is to say, the problem of persons who are detached, unrelated, lacking in affect, tending towards depersonalization, and covering up their problems by means of intellectualizations and technical formulations…There is also plenty of evidence that the sense of isolation, the alienation of one's self from the world is suffered not only by people in pathological conditions, but by countless “normal” persons as well in our day - Rollo May
The compulsive type is similar in kind to the stiff schizoid. They may even get along quite well together. The compulsive is an obsessive type whose relations with external objects is controlling. He obsesses about the height of the grass in his garden. He obsesses about the wrinkles in the sheets, blankets and curtains, about the disorganized jars and cans in the cupboard and dining-table arrangement. He never drives over the speed-limit, and is always super-concerned with his appearance. Like the schizoid, he usually makes an exceptional employee. He prefers being in a superior position, and usually makes an obnoxious boss or headmaster. He’s attracted to jobs allowing him to regiment others. We find him working for the police, army or state. Disorder unnerves this type enormously. Even though everything is clean, neat and precise in their lives, there’s no love involved. Nothing owned is cherished for its own sake. If they have relationships of an intimate kind it is always with people who are submissive, dependent and weak.
When studying pathological types, we must at all times remember what Wilhelm Reich taught. For Reich, Lowen and Janov the Freudian superego is not strictly "in the head." In fact it makes greater sense to equate it with the structure of the body, particularly with the musculature. In bioenergetic terms, compulsives and schizoids are highly "armored," insensitive and frigid. In each of the four cases, and with neuroses in general, the person's subconscious desire is to avoid legitimate suffering.
The depressive is superficially a feeling-type and comes across as far more “human” than the previous two. They do not appear withdrawn and indifferent, and certainly do not focus on orderliness. They are, however, ridden with anxiety and are no lovers of independence and individuality. They often have difficulty taking control of their lives, experiencing bouts of deep doubt and insecurity. Their way out of anxiety is to depend almost entirely on other people. They are clingy and addicted to pleasing everyone. Although this trait actually makes them repulsive, they never twig it, and carry on servicing others for as long as they can. This does not mean that those on the receiving end deserve their attention. It’s not the important thing for the depressive. Their wish to “live through others,” is all that matters, not the other person’s actual needs or morality.
Those "entitled" types infesting society today get to be the loathsome creatures they are because of depressive mothers and fathers who worked to make them feel privileged and special. We see that the depressive is, therefore, a rather dangerous type. Their presence and influence prevents people taking personal responsibility and providing for themselves. The so-called "Welfare State" is due to the mindset of depressive personality types. The other three neurotic types are not naturally inclined to make life easy for others. Indeed, compulsives and schizoids get a great kick out of the suffering of others. They are often sado-masochists.
The hysteric is usually also gregarious and outgoing. They are the most friendly and carefree type of the four. One does not feel judged in their company, and they are generally a pleasure to be with, at least for a time. Eventually one sees their pathological side. They do not dwell on the past, and are ever on the go. Their need is for constant change and distraction, which the world provides in plenty. Regardless of what befalls the hysteric, there’s always tomorrow, and always something new and exciting around the corner. This is true even for relationships. The hysteric enters and exits relationships frequently. Each one is captivating, but only for a short period. A hysteric will not maintain a serious relationship for more than six to nine months. As they tire of an involvement, they will accuse the partner of being boring, unspontaneous, critical and controlling. Off they dart without a qualm. Like amoral adolescents they flaunt obligations and promises. They are the busiest and most extrovert of the types. By thirty they're exhausted with pleasuring themselves. It's downhill from there.
The hysteric and schizoid are often attracted to joining mass movements. They gravitate toward the Crowd. For the hysteric the Thugocracy is a source of ever-changing sensations, while for the schizoid it works to disguise their congenital fear of intimacy. He can say to himself …I’m in love with the cause and my comrades in arms…I’m a thorough-going humanitarian fighting poverty and injustice...
Hysterics and schizoids have another thing in common. Being the two most unproductive and uncreative types, they are motivated to appear other than they are. Joining the Crowd allows them to engage in an anxiety-lessening charade. Since they already wear a mask, it's not difficult for them to don another. It's actually easy for both types. Since self-deception is at the root of their neurosis, they must at all costs convince themselves that they are among the most creative and productive people alive.
Schizoids and hysterics are often plagiarizers who scavenge and reproduce the ideas and creations of others. Our world of endless cheap and banal reproductions wouldn't exist without their insidious industry. Genuine fakes are made by genuine fakes.
My task is to free man from man - Ayn Rand
The four pathological types are what they are primarily because of anxiety. We choose one of the types to shield ourselves against suffering and anxiety. Whatever we suffer at the hands of toxic parents inevitably sends us down a pathological path. Reality is sacrificed in the name of self-protection and escapism. The schizoid type becomes frozen and indifferent against experience. The compulsive compensates for feelings of inadequacy and weakness by robotic controlling behavior. Objects around him are taken in hand and forced into place. People in his life are also dominated and "organized" in a similar way.
The depressive escapes from anxiety into the lives of other people. All feeling is directed toward the needs of others that are not genuinely loved for their own sake. This device allows the depressive to forget about themselves and ignore their own feelings and needs. Their love for others is, therefore, insincere and shallow.
The hysteric escapes feelings of anxiety by perpetual extroversion. Life is just one big party. The world is full of tantalizing distractions and sensations. There's so much to do, so many places to go, there’s no time for stillness and contemplation. The hysteric is a social butterfly, always hip to what’s happening and turned on by the next big thing. They join the Crowd in their flight from themselves, that is from Selfhood. There’s no time for that, says the hysteric to themselves ...we’ve got to think of the minorities, single mothers and victims of inequality.
While hysterics and schizoids prefer political causes and mass movements, the average depressive personality type uses intimate relationships as their bolthole. They take their domestic and social duties toward friends and family to the extreme. They become obsessive fixers and planners, and are the most "selfless" of the four neurotic types. They often make their partners and friends embarassed and uncomfortable because of their over-attentive behavior. Others soon deduce that the depressive's care and concern is born from a total lack of self-interest and self-care. There are times when a depressive finds themselves attracted to a hysteric. In these cases the depressive's hope is that their buoyant, extroverted partner will "take them out of themselves." It usually works well enough for a time, although it often ends badly. They're bound to finally exhaust each others tolerance.
Since the Thugocracy is chock full of other hysterics and schizoids, the deranged ideas in one’s mind get amplified. It’s a good feeling and very addictive. What we know as “Socialism,” is attractive to pathological types convinced they're changing the world for the better. Any sane person can see it's far from the case. The pathological type brings ruin to everything they touch and everyone they contact.
Fortunately, we are now in an age when we can, if we so desire, to get a handle on pathological people - these constitutional moral inferiors. We can learn to pick them out and thereby protect ourselves from their baneful influence.
However, we must remember that we each embody one or more of the four traits. No one on earth is free from it. There are compulsive, schizoid, depressive and hysteric aspects to each and every personality, and everyone seeks in irrational ways to escape suffering and anxiety. After a little study, each of us can learn to discern pathological tendencies within ourselves. It helps to do the same with others.
THE SCHIZOID
My childhood needs were not met, so I ceased feeling altogether. I’m strong and superior because I never reveal my needs and desires to anyone. I abjure intimacy and harden myself against the false love of others.
THE DEPRESSIVE
My needy, infantile parents couldn’t take care of themselves. I ended up looking after them, and was valued and praised for doing so. I carry on servicing others whether they deserve it or not and by doing so I forget about my own needs and desires.
THE COMPULSIVE
I was hurt when young. My caregivers were sloppy, disorganized and frazzled. Everything else was prioritized and I was neglected. I felt unwanted, unnoticed and useless. Therefore, I make sure everything is properly sorted and arranged in a precise manner. Life needs to be organized and controlled. There can be no spontaneity, mutability, dirt and disarray. Inanimate objects submit to my will, and I feel good when everything is neat, clean and in perefect order. I Iove the smell of napalm in the morning.
THE HYSTERIC
My parents were self-absorbed hypocrites who treated me as a toy to play with. I learned to be sunny, playful and extroverted. It gets me the attention I crave. It helps me avoid looking deeply into myself. Being on display and admired by others is what it’s all about. One must live for experience and fortunately the world provides endless distraction. I never need confront my inner rage and pain. Let the good times roll.
Hey doc, if it weren't for reality, I'd be just fine - Scott Peck (citing a patient's complaint)
Sanity is hard won. It requires discerning the neurotic or pathological traits within us, and fathoming why they exist. This in turn may mean breaking the fifth commandment, and not automatically forgiving abusive mothers and fathers whose demagoguery (or Adultism) made us what we are.
Anxiety is a basal mood and state. It need not have an obvious external cause. Most of one's life is spent suppressing and evading it. The four neurotic types mentioned here come about as attempts to alleviate anxiety. Observing society today confirms that the preferred method of escape is via compulsive and schizoid patterns of behavior. These types are found in plenty as one ascends the corporate ladder. In everyday life we are more likely to encounter depressives and hysterics. The average masochist irrationally escapes anxiety by being hurt (punished for supposed badness), whereas sadists escape anxiety by inflicting pain on others, thinking to themselves that as long as I see others suffering, I must be okay. In general, psychotics punish others, while neurotics punish themselves
…intrinsic weakness and helplessness toward a world perceived as potentially hostile and dangerous - Karen Horney (on neurosis)
As the ancient Vedic sages said, Self-realization is necessary before God-realization. In other words, one must gently analyse themselves and identify those traits born from one’s evasion of legitimate feeling. We must confront and defy any and all cop-outs, beliefs or paradigms preventing us from committing to this “holy work.” Only the man who heroically faces his own psychology and typology is in a position to change the world for the better. He does not need the assistance of others, and as a hygienic, sovereign being, he joins no crowds.
https://www.michaeltsarion.com/surviving...lypse.html