[Alberto]

As the subject line - by the way, we're branching about from
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---------- Post added 06-09-2012 at 07:36 PM ----------

Occasioned by
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So does psychoanalysis - like many sciences that can make a few predictions and fail with a few others (you mention sciences that made some successful predictions and yet still failed in many others, conveniently taking into account only their successes :-) ), psychoanalisis can predict the outcome of a psychological illness, although I totally agree it cannot predict everything and may fail in some predictions like many other sciences do: do you know that a (responsible) psychoanalist does not accept you in therapy if s/he cannot predict a good outcome?

	Months ago on change.org a petition to find Luka Rocco Magnotta was posted after the man was said to have uploaded several videos of killing live cats. (...) Carol Rehnlund wrote in the 'About' section, "Please sign this petition before he progresses to humans." (...) "This is textbook," Batten said, "This is typical of anti-social behaviours and psychopathy."

(
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This is textbook - thencefort, a prediction.

Now, we may argue that it is behavioural and namely not psychoanalytic. But you could have come to the same conclusion if you would have known the oneiric life of the subject, and probably with even greater anticipation.

When a person is about to do these things, dreams are quite telling (although the formal behaviour may still be impeccable... typical of many psychopaths) well before s/he does it - the only problem being that I doubt a psychopath already beyond the non return point will ever bother telling or even recording his dreams.

ps psychoanalysis is about the oneiric life - if this is not understood (and at times it isn't, this is why I add this), it means one has not understood yet (and it's no fault, to be sure) what psychoanalysis is concerned with:
«Dreams are the golden highway to the unconscious» (Freud)

[RBM]

	Originally Posted by Oneiric
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	1: of or relating to dreams

Had to look it up, as the term was new to me.

There are several levels of entry points into this OP.

RE:Oneiric

How prevalent is the terms usage in psychoanalysis ?

[IslandHead]

	Originally Posted by Alberto To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	(you mention sciences that made some successful predictions and yet still failed in many others, conveniently taking into account only their successes :-) ),

Good science consistently makes good predictions. That is how you know you have a strong model or theory, because it is predicting things correctly. When a model/theory fails to predict things, then it is falsified, and a new explanatory frame work is constructed that is better at making predictions.

( To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. ) This is textbook - thencefort, a prediction. Now, we may argue that it is behavioural and namely not psychoanalytic. But you could have come to the same conclusion if you would have known the oneiric life of the subject, and probably with even greater anticipation. When a person is about to do these things, dreams are quite telling (although the formal behaviour may still be impeccable... typical of many psychopaths) well before s/he does it - the only problem being that I doubt a psychopath already beyond the non return point will ever bother telling or even recording his dreams. ps psychoanalysis is about the oneiric life - if this is not understood (and at times it isn't, this is why I add this), it means one has not understood yet (and it's no fault, to be sure) what psychoanalysis is concerned with: «Dreams are the golden highway to the unconscious» (Freud)

So if I'm reading this correctly you're saying something along these lines. A random crisis nurse says it is common for crazy serial killers to kill animals before moving on to people. But you're arguing if we could read the dreams of this would be serial killer it would allow for an even more accurate prediction. Is there any data that is supports this absurd assertion? Anything done with control groups to compare dream analysis of killers and non-killer? You know humans have REM sleep (dreams) before they are even born. You can dream before you even have a concept of self. How are dreams reliable for anything?

[Alberto]

You said earlier that «
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Here (apparently in a push to disprove what nobody can disprove namely the value of psychoanalysis) you overwhelm both approaches: for as you attempt to disqualify psychoanalysis you disqualify also that very same cognitive behavioral psychology which not long ago you said you were instead so inclined to appreciate.

In fact, there is no despicable laughable or incompetent "random crisis nurse" who states that if you begin torturing eviscerating maiming and killing cats and you keep doing it, eventually you move on to humans: it is instead a behavioural pattern that both criminal forensic profiling and (beware, non-freudian!) behavioural psychology discovered as a fact (whence the expression: "textbook").

If you want to read (text)books where such connections or similar connections are explained or treated, with the related findings figures and statistics, I may suggest among the dozen of hundreds available:


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So, this is not "a random nurse" who made an accurate prediction, but a science - that science named psychology towards which you are so wary, in its behavioural branch towards which you previously alleged you were less wary. :D

As for psychoanalysis, it is based on dream interpretation (a fact, but it is not clear to me if you are among the many persons who didn't even know it - I quoted that sentence by Freud exactly to supply an element to signify this was not a product of my fertile imagination lol).

Psychoanalysis=dream analysis.
Whatever relies on something else is another branch of psychology, but certainly not psychoanalysis.

The effectivity of psychoanalysis is not proved by anything else but the patient.
It is the patient that improves and eventually overcomes emotional barriers that had conditioned his/her whole life before undergoing psychoanalysis.
The evidence is the patient. And such evidence is reached via... dream analysis.

I may be the witness, I may be the evidence, I may be the physical evidence and support of this "absurd assertion".

Dream interpretation works, and might solve, at times, even the most complicated cases.
The fact you can dream before you have (as you rightly say) a concept of the self, far from being an objection as you seem to believe it, is instead perfectly consistent with dream interpretation and, actually, an incorporated finding.

In fact dreams come from the unconscious not from the conscious (cortex) which has cognition of "the self", and it is exactly because they do not come from the cortex and they carry no cognition of "the self" (as you mean it), that they are useful to psychoanalysis: since our conscience as we experience it in our awake state can have no role in the making of dreams and in their shaping, dreams are quintessentially unconscious processes that supply us with information about what is going on in that deep receptacle where our minds still operate not via evoluted neocortical syntagms but via icons.

Have access to dreams, and they will tell you very clearly (via images, rather than via a BBC radio transmission, you know...) that the unconscious life of a potential killer is about to explode - unless of course you believe that the reason a sociopath kills persons and later eats them is because it would have been his cortex, rather than his pulsional instincts, that have persuaded him into doing that out of logical reasons.
Homicide and cannibalism, notoriously so logic!

The control groups you are speaking of are made every day, by the millions, even right now: in psychoanalytical therapies. Persons from every walk of life under the most severe emotional conditions have been successfully treated with psychoanalysis - which means via dream analysis.

To be sure, it cannot cure all (but then, not even medicine cures all, does it?); and, even more, it would never treat psychopaths. This not because their dreams would not be telling of their conditions, but because no matter how much you may garner by their dreams, they are patients whose psyche is compromised beyond any hope of cure - so treateing them would be exactly like overtreatment of a terminal case whose body is compromised beyond hope.

But it cures enough to say that what you cannot cure can still provide powerful signals in the oneiric life of the subject, which if are not usable for delivering a therapy are still and nonetheless very useful and usable in order to supply a prediction.

Do you believe that the fact you're scarcely familiar with this topic (which is fine & legitimate for we cannot read everything or know everything!!) is a good reason to craft strong opinions about it too?

The literature on the topic is immense. Am I supposed to quote millions of books? Is this your argument - should I produce millions of references and if then you don't know a thing about them, psychoanalysis would be done?


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Pro and against:

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[IslandHead]

	In fact, there is no despicable laughable or incompetent "random crisis nurse" who states that if you begin killing cats and you keep doing it, eventually you move on to humans: it is instead a behavioural pattern that both criminal forensic profiling and (beware, non-freudian!) behavioural psychology discovered as a fact (whence the expression: "textbook").

I misspoke, I'm well aware of the link between animals abuse and violent behaviour towards people. I didn't communicate well in that last post. What I was trying to question is wasn't the link between animal abuse/mutilation and violent crime, but to the link you're proposing of between the violent crimes, dream content and the subconscious drives.

	So, this is not "a random nurse" who made an accurate prediction, but a science - that science named psychology towards which you are so wary, in its behavioural branch towards which you previously alleged you were less wary. :D

I misspoke, I don't have a problem with that behaviouralist view. the words "random crisis nurse", was used because I didn't understand why the author of the article would contact a crisis nurse instead of a forensic psychologist or something. I'm not even sure what crisis nurse does.

The effectivity of psychoanalysis is not proved by anything else but the patient. It is the patient that improves and eventually overcomes emotional barriers that had conditioned his/her whole life before undergoing psychoanalysis. The evidence is the patient. And such evidence is reached via... dream analysis. I may be the witness, I may be the evidence, I may be the physical evidence and support of this "absurd assertion".

The efficacy can be studied however. The benefits could just be the placebo effect. Some benefits of surgeries are produced by the placebo effect.

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If that can happen, it surely can occur with the psychoanalysis

	Dream interpretation works, and might solve, at times, even the most complicated cases. The fact you can dream before you have (as you rightly say) a concept of the self, far from being an objection as you seem to believe it, is instead perfectly consistent with dream interpretation and, actually, an incorporated finding.

Or it implies that because you can dream prior to having subconscious drives, that dreams aren't associated with them.

In fact dreams come from the unconscious not from the conscious (cortex) which has cognition of "the self", and it is exactly because they do not come from the cortex and they carry no cognition of "the self" (as you mean it), that they are useful to psychoanalysis: since our conscience as we experience it in our awake state can have no role in the making of dreams and in their shaping, dreams are quintessentially unconscious processes that supply us with information about what is going on in that deep receptacle where our minds still operate not via evoluted neocortical syntagms but via icons.

Brain activity while dreaming in REM sleep is vary similar to the activity shown while being awake. This is why it has been called paradoxical sleep.

	Do you believe that the fact you're scarcely familiar with this topic (which is fine & legitimate for we cannot read everything or know everything!!) is a good reason to craft strong opinions about it too?

I reject the idea dreams are products of subconscious drives. I prefer the neurological theories on what dreams are. Like the continual-activation theory and the activation-synthesis hypothesis. For me it makes more sense that dreams are part of a process which helps encode memories, mature neurons, and promotes brain health rather than something that is a window to spy on the id.

[Alberto]

	Originally Posted by IslandHead To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	I reject the idea dreams are products of subconscious drives. I prefer the neurological theories on what dreams are. Like the continual-activation theory and the activation-synthesis hypothesis. For me it makes more sense that dreams are part of a process which helps encode memories, mature neurons, and promotes brain health rather than something that is a window to spy on the id.

I respect your point of view.
However, see - at best, both theoretical («the neurological theories») fields.

I have here this huge book about neurology


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which to date I have only perused but that I plan reading when I have time - not that it would be my very first book about neurology though.

It is a book that, I know already, has a reductivist approach so psychoanalytic "theories" probably won't be welcomed by it.

Yet, nonetheless, I already know that I will enjoy reading it immensely. And I know that I won't try to prove it right or wrong, I'll just learn all I can, and be thankful no matter if I agreed or disagreed with its hypothesis (for certainly there will be plenty of those also).

All knowledge, all culture is beautiful - all knoweldge makes sense, also if it is not perfect, also if it does not fit my ideas, my previous culture, or my prejudices.

I will enjoy it.

You should not disqualify psychoanalysis merely on the basis that you're not much into it or you have not had many chances to get deeper into it. It's no fault, but also no basis to produce strong opinions about it, you see.

I can assure you it is a field of investigation that is immense, one of the most interesting out there, one that proved among the most fertile, and one where many of the most brilliant minds of the last about 150 years found much food to chew on.

normally in the case of persons not very familiar with psychoanalysis they suggest:

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It would not be my preferred choice, though (mine would have been James Hillman).

However, if one day you like, try to get more acquainted with psychoanalysis. Despite all our rationalism, we don't even know yet what most of our DNA does - maybe in 200 years it will come out that Jung was right, part of it codes not proteins but abstract immemorial ideas and myths transmitted to us as datagrams via images (archetypes) which later on we find in our dreams.

And if one expects perfection, we will never find it in this world. Neither the most advanced and costly neurology of our time nor psychoanalysis saved my mother. We need to be realists and humans at once.

[joeleoj]

Having been schooled a bit in both ends of the spectrum (psychoanalysis and neurology), I see that they are both simply different perspectives on the human organism; one being more on the crest of the current trend of psychology and science, and the other at the tough. I will say that some within the neurological perspective do respect that freud intuitively was right in many of his theories, but unfortunately that his methods were not exactly up the scientifically rigorous code that developed after him. However, without him, the field would not be where it is.

[RBM]

The 'placebo effect' is a reductionist perspective to begin with. That said, it is also a materialist viewpoint, by definition. It exists as such cause of the ignorance in not recognizing consciousness as fundamental in reality.

Point being, reductionism has value in learning what component parts do individually. To understand the relationship of the component parts in an individual system, however, takes a holistic perspective.

A well rounded knowledge base will be able to plumb the reductionist pieces and at the same time grok the holistic nature of a system in the best of the sense 'the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts'.

---------- Post added 06-09-2012 at 08:14 PM ----------

Originally Posted by joeleoj To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Having been schooled a bit in both ends of the spectrum (psychoanalysis and neurology), I see that they are both simply different perspectives on the human organism; one being more on the crest of the current trend of psychology and science, and the other at the tough. I will say that some within the neurological perspective do respect that freud intuitively was right in many of his theories, but unfortunately that his methods were not exactly up the scientifically rigorous code that developed after him. However, without him, the field would not be where it is.

I think this is a well balanced viewpoint. Species knowledge isn't stagnant but can be viewed, at a cost, in that manner.

My general thinking on Freud's contribution, though is different than you have expressed - if he hadn't done what he did, when he did, things would be different.

Someone else would have done it, or we'd still be waiting for someone to do it. At any rate it would be different, now.

[joeleoj]

	Originally Posted by RBM To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Someone else would have done it, or we'd still be waiting for someone to do it. At any rate it would be different, now.

Well I didn't preclude such a viewpoint, you just put a finer point on it.
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I think the influence of French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot on Freud might have had a lot to do with his theories, for better or worse.

[RBM]

	Originally Posted by joeleoj To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Well I didn't preclude such a viewpoint, you just put a finer point on it. To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. I think the influence of French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot on Freud might have had a lot to do with his theories, for better or worse.

Well, try this for an EVEN finer point >

Freud had a nephew. His name was
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:

	Edward Louis Bernays (November 22, 1891 – March 9, 1995), was an Austrian-American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda, referred to in his obituary as "the father of public relations".[1] He combined the ideas of Gustave Le Bon and Wilfred Trotter on crowd psychology with the psychoanalytical ideas of his uncle, Sigmund Freud.

A rhetorical question - How influential is public relations in modern Western civilization ?

If you haven't seen it Adam Curtis did a documentary called
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	The Century of the Self is an award winning British television documentary film. It focuses on how Sigmund Freud, Anna Freud, and Edward Bernays influenced the way corporations and governments have analyzed,* dealt with, and controlled ‬people

[Nemesis]

Bah, Freudian psychology has been irrelevant for decades.

His most valuable contribution was the notion that we have desires and drives that we are not consciously aware of. While that wasn't a new idea, it generated testable hypotheses that formed early attempts to quantify mental processes. The specifics of Freudian psychology are largely nonsense, but he was absolutely instrumental in laying the groundwork of modern psychology.

I very much agree with joeleoj's views so far.

[Alberto]

Originally Posted by Nemesis To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Bah, Freudian psychology has been irrelevant for decades. His most valuable contribution was the notion that we have desires and drives that we are not consciously aware of. While that wasn't a new idea, it generated testable hypotheses that formed early attempts to quantify mental processes. The specifics of Freudian psychology are largely nonsense, but he was absolutely instrumental in laying the groundwork of modern psychology. I very much agree with joeleoj's views so far.

Well if you think of how much vocabulary psychology owes to him - true a few terms existed already but had no framework around them, it was Freud who gave them widespread popularity and a solid or even brand new foundation which perpetuated itself winning over the earlier one (more: between the terminology of Immanuel Kant for explaining cognitive processes and that of Freud, Freud's terminologies won hands down).

Narcissism, coation, compulsion, obsession, abreaction, unconscious (!), ego/es (id)/superego, oedipus complex, psychological complex, psychic constellation, thanatos vs eros, libido, association method, interpretation of dreams (he gave it a whole brand new meaning), cathartic method, death instinct, condensation, displacement, pulsion/drive, lapsus, sublimation, primal fantasies, oral/anal/phallic/genital phases, invidia penis, fear of castration, regression, resistance, censure, dreamwork, taboo, hypnosis (yes already used by Charcot, agreed, but never elaborated at length like with Freud - hypnosis is used still today: for instance, accounts of recent therapeutical and successful use of it in
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, well unless it was
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)... and I am certain I have forgotten quite a few (for one, «psychoanalysis» itself lol).
Oh and terminable and interminable analysis: for like with medicine at times you heal, but other times, unfortunately, you need to keep taking your drugs your whole life.
Oh, another one pops up: paranoia - the famous
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lifted it to a new impressive dignity!

Mmmh, and again another one, and of capital importance (I have heard it used in an hospital by a MD and not by a psychologist not long ago!): transfert (or
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, in English).

For a man whose theories have been "irrelevant for decades" it is quite remarkable a legacy used still today. I wish we had in our days psychiatrists or psychologists who could provide so many concepts to their field - whilst at best they provide a couple
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The problem with Freud has always been that he was focused on the pathological man (thence the accusation of being "pessimist"). But the sad fact is that not only we frequently meet exactly pathological types, but everyone, me included, still hosts pathological sides. It never becomes unseasonable or ill timed.

The other accusation is his focus on sexuality - but we had right here on these forums a thread titled
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, started not later than... yesterday at 6pm - for a man whose legacy is allegedly bygone, it seems instead that we still find considerable instances of pathological behaviour that fully falls under Freud's "sexual" umbrella and about which laymen keep wondering whereas all the answers are already in Freud.

Another thing that caused dissent was his concept of invidia penis (which matches a man's fear for castration). But I can attest I have met persons who undoubtedly had it, so deep seated was their illogical hatred for the other sex - I am sure all of you have met a few, in this lifetime.

Eventually, we have his best contribution that so few understand - the oedipus complex. It is regrettable to see that so few persons understand that it exists, how it develops in the very first years of a child, and how dramatically it may affect and utterly destroy a whole life. In my opinion, the best statement I can make about it is that I have never, never seen anything more destructive in a man's life. And by destructive I mean that if it presents itself with some virulence and is left unsolved it may murder you - physically.
An activated and unsolved (=unrecognized as such...) Oedipus Complex is a killer that at first stalks you stealthly and eventually assassinates you or those arond you brutally. An unsolved serious Oedipus is unforgiving.

What made emerge this oedipic component was exactly hypnosis at first, and eventually dream analysis - some dreams are unmistakable not because they are about explicit sexual acts (indeed, if they are explicit, they signal a solution of the complex: the patient's unconscious may finally admit the bare "naked" action...), but because they involve an amount of emotional energies addressed so obsessively towards a parent in dreams, that it's only compatible, really, with an underlying pulsional drive that revolves around sexual connotations. Smells like a rose, looks like a rose... see, duh, maybe... it's a rose?

---------- Post added 06-10-2012 at 06:30 AM ----------

	Originally Posted by RBM To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Had to look it up, as the term was new to me. There are several levels of entry points into this OP. RE:Oneiric How prevalent is the terms usage in psychoanalysis ?

Yes it is.
Or at least in Italian books (all my Freud's and Jung's readings have been in Italian) the corresponding Italian term "onirico" abounds (dunno in the original German though).

[Roier]

Every butterfly :S might like to be ABUSED, but just by an ATTRACTIVE person of the opposite sex, if not gay.

Because of the lack of words :S every "geek" dreams of the dream opposite sex just having their way, if attractive, I think that is what Freud meant,

I'd love Megan Fox forcing her way with me
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Amy Farrah Fowler from the big bang theory most probably would love been raped by Jean-Claude Van Damme

So the butterfly dream might have its reason :S

Just an opinion
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[titi monkey]

	Originally Posted by Alberto To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Yes it is. Or at least in Italian books (all my Freud's and Jung's readings have been in Italian) the corresponding Italian term "onirico" abounds (dunno in the original German though).

Freud's theory was to Jung's what Newton's theory was to Einstein's: one describes special cases whereas the other is more encompassing (and none are complete).

[RBM]

	Originally Posted by titi monkey To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Freud's theory was to Jung's what Newton's theory was to Einstein's: one describes special cases whereas the other is more encompassing (and none are complete).

I've had an intuitive grasp for most my life on this principle but have not fully appreciated it's import at the intellectual level until relatively recently, It's an essential tool to relating seemingly unrelated elements. Explicit recognition leading to usage, makes for much higher quality models-making.

[Nemesis]

	Originally Posted by Alberto To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Narcissism, coation, compulsion, obsession, abreaction, unconscious (!), ego/es (id)/superego, oedipus complex, psychological complex, psychic constellation, thanatos vs eros, libido, association method, interpretation of dreams(he gave it a whole brand new meaning, cathartic method, death instinct....

Your entire post pretty much outlines Freud's impact on modern pop-psychology, not contemporary psychology as it is studied and practiced by people in the field. Just because the average shmuck knows what the Oedipus complex is, doesn't mean anything. His impact on the field was undeniable, but Freudian psychology as a movement or theoretical framework has been dead for a very long time. Some of the terminology introduced by Freud still gets used... but the definitions and concepts behind those terms have changed drastically and evolved.

If you want to argue that he's still "relevant" in pop-psychology as it's bantered around by the lay-person, I suppose you're right... but that's not psychology proper. I regret to inform you that Freudian psychology is dead.

[Alberto]

The idea that a framework may still be alive in all its main concepts, which are still used all around the world by specialists -
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,
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, every nation has its- and laymen both, to signify a success that affects both the pop and the pro layers, and that yet at the very same time is dead by the agency of the evidence of its very same overwhelming success, is undoubtedly very thrilling and engaging an idea.
Maybe one day I will try to understand what it means.

But right now there is something else that interests me a bit more: in case somebody is wondering «ok but why the Oedipus, what could its function be?», a set of answers is the following:

( Show Spoiler )

There is a residual question: if the situation is such, why the Oedipus Complex?
That is, what may its (evolutionary, to name one, or ontogenetic) purpose be, provided the Oedipus is so easily subject to be turned into so grim and nefarious a dis-function?

In order to address this question it is preferable to decompile the oedipal aggregate into its components, so to make understood first what in it is a fact and what a thesis.
Without this preliminary operation, it may be impossibile to determine what in such a question may be ascribed to a misunderstanding and what to a proper understanding of the Oedipus: that is, is it a dysfunction or is it that the spectator has not understood what The Oedipus is and, consequently, turns a cognitive issue that pertains to him/her into one lent to the oedipical structure?
Is it the beholder, or the beheld?

The existence of the Oedipus Complex as a mental formation is not an hypothesis, but a finding (and therefore a fact: mental, and yet still a fact): there are deductions drawn from it that are, indeed, hypothesis - but as such they come into play only at a second stage.

How this finding?
For a person used to the findings of empirical science, this may sound puzzling because so much of our empirical science today revolves around laboratory experiments: we have been grown surreptitiously accustomed to the idea that if you haven't a vial or a photography, a microscope or a telescope, you can see no good, no evil, and no finding.

However, the fact that in the case of the Oedipus our laboratory is not composed of inorganic and insentient samples arrayed on an anonymous shelf but instead of an organic and thinking entity, namely an onymous human being walking, should not induce us into being indulgent with our aforementioned biased custom: a human being is as much valid a specimen to release empirical corroborations as any other laboratory reagent (or if you prefer a really ugly comparison: as any other guinea pig) is.

If for some odd reason somebody may deem vivisection of a primate or the decapitation of mice as a reliable path to evidence, and the observation of inorganic matter as another reliable source of evidence, and yet a wholesome organic and living human biological entity as no longer reliable a source of evidence, the onus of supporting such disparity of treatment towards evidences with a rationale capable of standing inquiry rests squarely upon such somebody's shoulders.

We all know (well, for an indubitable fact: we have them) that most dreams exhibit a narrative, a seeming plot.
This is why your dreams are something you can tell - they are not rhapsodies of mere colors or sounds like (say) an aurora borealis, but they are sequences of structured events - and though they may resemble more an impassionated fairy tale from the Arabian Nights rather than an impersonally balanced and well tempered essay by David Hume, fairy tales still sport an extremely
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despite their fleeting or ghastly appearance and momentous coups de théâtre, and a degree of structure that
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.

These narrations and plots can be considered accordingly to two levels.

One is the individual dream.
Another one is found, instead, taking into account sequences of dreams (garnered through weeks, months, years) that seem busy repeating, reformulating, clarifying, elaborating further and further, and reproposing one same plot theme.

Indeed, once considered as sequences (and for the sake of a good metaphor), dreams afford a kind of consistency akin to that which we may get and feel by watching (after all, also a dream is watched) a sequence of installments of one very same TV series. In TV series the single installments may vary in their details, but the overall characters, situations, topos and stereotypes, hideous crimes and smart detectives, are indeed recurring and supply each given TV series with an identity whose physiognomy survives its modulations. There is a theme: somebody is saying and acting something, there beyond the river and across the trees.

On both those levels, this oneiric plot insistently, and even with obstinacy, may propose a whole gamut of actions very much and very clearly emotionally laden (again, on two levels: both for the avatar of the dreamer, namely his/her own ego as experienced in the dream, and for the person who dreamt the dream and which may feel very upset and at times even sickened by recolleting it once awake) all introducing and addressing the dreamer's parents.

You may be surprised by the high and nearly daily frequency with which relatives appear in the dreams of a person that has a strong unresolved Oedipus complex, and how instead such previously omnipresent parents suddenly disappear from the dream scene, in order to show up again only once in a fluke (maybe even less than once a year) in that very same person, once the Oedipus Complex has been solved.
One would really need to account for this weird finding.

The intensity with which the relations between the son or daughter and his/her parents are depicted by these dreams may at times reach heights that are nothing less than shakespearean.
Jelousy, assassinations, the sound and the fury, sudden betryals, accurately planned crimes, rape, violence, torture, passionate elans of affection, delusions, tantrums, suspiciousness, extermination of family members, cruelties of any kind, mutilations of or inflicted by a parent, frauds, thefts, escapades, romance - the dreamer is busy exchanging with his oneiric family members a whole gamut of deeply emotionally laden actions.

Violence appears the quintessential hallmark of a contended and troubled pulsional world on the rise - a civil war or an infighting suddenly flaring within the young child facing for the first time his or her pulsional inheritance, a brave new world that is striving and struggling to attain an equilibrium on a battleground where everything is still into the most dubious and fluid state.
As an aside, it is true that you may induce gruesome dreams also with some drugs (as scarcely understood side effects, actually), but are we serious with this objection? For it implies that since I can make a person sleep also by administering an aenesthetic, then sleeping wouldn't be foremost and first of all a natural function to be explained as such.

This is a fact, this is a finding: the patient (as a source of evidence) reports (to the psychoanalyst) such dreams.

It may well be that an oneiric activity may have also its biological substratum oriented towards the goal of granting neuronal integrity and memory elaboration.
But nothing, absolutely nothing, in the psychoanalytical approach obstructs or stands in the way of neural sciences: the two goals, the psychological one and the physical one, may not only coexist but, as a matter of fact, they might even be... cooperating!
It is, as hinted at the beginning, only a consequence of having misunderstood the Oedipus Complex what may lead neurologists who are extremely competent in neurology but scarcely acquainted with psychonalaysis to mistake the Oedipus Complex for a contender.
Nothing in psychoanalysis jeopardizes neurology.

And yet one still really needs to account also for such stunning oneiric plots so pervicaciously oriented in one recurring and nearly obsessive direction: the parental one.

If we mistake the Oedipus Complex by its vulgate namely a child who wants to have sexual intercourse with the parent of the opposite sex, we may miss the real meaning of the Oedipus Complex.
Speaking of a sexual desire about the Oedipus, is only the convenient synthetic syntagm to signify that what we see activated in these dreams is the whole range of actions that an extremely passionate (and also extremely immature... as the age of the child might warrant, actually) lover might enact in real life in order to win the love and affection of a craved counterpart and to gain the unconditional possession of the girl/man of his/her most diehard yearnings.

This is a finding; maybe the representational unit or name («Oedipus») is not of our liking, but it is still just a conventional name to mean a wider context and plot which nonetheless and positively exists and needs to be accounted for - the alternative being very unscientifical, namely... ignoring it or brushing it aside as something that does not really need to be explained.

Now, saying it is a love story is much more than, say, an "educated guesswork": it really seems the explanation of the plot.
It is not that this explanation («it is a love story») would have been unlikely: it is rather the contrary.
That is, it would rather be another and different explanation («it is nothing», «it is a child who needs more toys», «it is a spoiled child», «it is just imagination - very consistent but, well, just imagination») to be unlikely.
Indeed, these oneiric plots seem desperate love stories: imagining that they are not what they so much seem to be, is what would be needed to be demonstrated (and not the other way round) for such dreams protest and «demonstrate» vehemently and repeatedly for their... face value!

And here comes the hypothesis: this happens because the child, while his/her encephalic system matures, necessarily begins to experience the whole gamut of emotions and pulsions that such encephalic system is designed to produce (in the limbic system) and to manage (in the cortex).
With the ripening of the structure come the functions. And please note that among these many functions there is also sexuality as one of the most capital ones.
Can you now imagine a very young cortex having to deal for the first time with the whole emotional baggage and imprinting of human emotions and with pulsions of such sweeping an importance?

The child has to cope. Indeed, childhood is no happy age. As soon as the lymbic system begins to be better synchronized and connected with the cortex, and the pathways begin to be laid, the implied functionalities erupt, and the cargos begin to transit.

As an aside, it is immediately apparent what ominous consequences it could have a misplacing of the neuronal joints preposed to administer such emotions and pulsions, if something goes awry (and with a dysfunctional parent, much may go awry!) at such premature and defining moment, with a very young human being still in becoming.

This occurs at an early age. It is not coincidence, in fact, that Freud's findings allocated the first emergence of the Oedipus Complex between 3 and 5 years of age, after which there is a relapse and again a last re-emergence - around 13 years of (well, teen...)age.

The hypothesis (after the finding) is that the child, as a young human being eager and ready to run the first tests and to laborate his/her capacity to relate with other human beings as one of the most critical functions that his/her biological system demands of him/her, finds the most natural object for such exercises in his/her parents (though a substitute human character may do as well, were such a character persistently present in the life of the child).

The rest, either you can imagine it or, well, you know it.

[joeleoj]

Originally Posted by Alberto To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

The idea that a framework may still be alive in all its main concepts, which are still used all around the world by specialists - To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. , To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. , every nation has its- and laymen both, to signify a success that affects both the pop and the pro layers, and that yet at the very same time is dead by the agency of the evidence of its very same overwhelming success, is undoubtedly very thrilling and engaging an idea. Maybe one day I will try to understand what it means. But right now there is something else that interests me a bit more: in case somebody is wondering «ok but why the Oedipus, what could its function be?», a set of answers is the following: ( Show Spoiler ) There is a residual question: if the situation is such, why the Oedipus Complex? That is, what may its (evolutionary, to name one, or ontogenetic) purpose be, provided the Oedipus is so easily subject to be turned into so grim and nefarious a dis-function? In order to address this question it is preferable to decompile the oedipal aggregate into its components, so to make understood first what in it is a fact and what a thesis. Without this preliminary operation, it may be impossibile to determine what in such a question may be ascribed to a misunderstanding and what to a proper understanding of the Oedipus: that is, is it a dysfunction or is it that the spectator has not understood what The Oedipus is and, consequently, turns a cognitive issue that pertains to him/her into one lent to the oedipical structure? Is it the beholder, or the beheld? The existence of the Oedipus Complex as a mental formation is not an hypothesis, but a finding (and therefore a fact: mental, and yet still a fact): there are deductions drawn from it that are, indeed, hypothesis - but as such they come into play only at a second stage. How this finding? For a person used to the findings of empirical science, this may sound puzzling because so much of our empirical science today revolves around laboratory experiments: we have been grown surreptitiously accustomed to the idea that if you haven't a vial or a photography, a microscope or a telescope, you can see no good, no evil, and no finding. However, the fact that in the case of the Oedipus our laboratory is not composed of inorganic and insentient samples arrayed on an anonymous shelf but instead of an organic and thinking entity, namely an onymous human being walking, should not induce us into being indulgent with our aforementioned biased custom: a human being is as much valid a specimen to release empirical corroborations as any other laboratory reagent (or if you prefer a really ugly comparison: as any other guinea pig) is. If for some odd reason somebody may deem vivisection of a primate or the decapitation of mice as a reliable path to evidence, and the observation of inorganic matter as another reliable source of evidence, and yet a wholesome organic and living human biological entity as no longer reliable a source of evidence, the onus of supporting such disparity of treatment towards evidences with a rationale capable of standing inquiry rests squarely upon such somebody's shoulders. We all know (well, for an indubitable fact: we have them) that most dreams exhibit a narrative, a seeming plot. This is why your dreams are something you can tell - they are not rhapsodies of mere colors or sounds like (say) an aurora borealis, but they are sequences of structured events - and though they may resemble more an impassionated fairy tale from the Arabian Nights rather than an impersonally balanced and well tempered essay by David Hume, fairy tales still sport an extremely To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. despite their fleeting or ghastly appearance and momentous coups de théâtre, and a degree of structure that To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. . These narrations and plots can be considered accordingly to two levels. One is the individual dream. Another one is found, instead, taking into account sequences of dreams (garnered through weeks, months, years) that seem busy repeating, reformulating, clarifying, elaborating further and further, and reproposing one same plot theme. Indeed, once considered as sequences (and for the sake of a good metaphor), dreams afford a kind of consistency akin to that which we may get and feel by watching (after all, also a dream is watched) a sequence of installments of one very same TV series. In TV series the single installments may vary in their details, but the overall characters, situations, topos and stereotypes, hideous crimes and smart detectives, are indeed recurring and supply each given TV series with an identity whose physiognomy survives its modulations. There is a theme: somebody is saying and acting something, there beyond the river and across the trees. On both those levels, this oneiric plot insistently, and even with obstinacy, may propose a whole gamut of actions very much and very clearly emotionally laden (again, on two levels: both for the avatar of the dreamer, namely his/her own ego as experienced in the dream, and for the person who dreamt the dream and which may feel very upset and at times even sickened by recolleting it once awake) all introducing and addressing the dreamer's parents. You may be surprised by the high and nearly daily frequency with which relatives appear in the dreams of a person that has a strong unresolved Oedipus complex, and how instead such previously omnipresent parents suddenly disappear from the dream scene, in order to show up again only once in a fluke (maybe even less than once a year) in that very same person, once the Oedipus Complex has been solved. One would really need to account for this weird finding. The intensity with which the relations between the son or daughter and his/her parents are depicted by these dreams may at times reach heights that are nothing less than shakespearean. Jelousy, assassinations, the sound and the fury, sudden betryals, accurately planned crimes, rape, violence, torture, passionate elans of affection, delusions, tantrums, suspiciousness, extermination of family members, cruelties of any kind, mutilations of or inflicted by a parent, frauds, thefts, escapades, romance - the dreamer is busy exchanging with his oneiric family members a whole gamut of deeply emotionally laden actions. Violence appears the quintessential hallmark of a contended and troubled pulsional world on the rise - a civil war or an infighting suddenly flaring within the young child facing for the first time his or her pulsional inheritance, a brave new world that is striving and struggling to attain an equilibrium on a battleground where everything is still into the most dubious and fluid state. As an aside, it is true that you may induce gruesome dreams also with some drugs (as scarcely understood side effects, actually), but are we serious with this objection? For it implies that since I can make a person sleep also by administering an aenesthetic, then sleeping wouldn't be foremost and first of all a natural function to be explained as such. This is a fact, this is a finding: the patient (as a source of evidence) reports (to the psychoanalyst) such dreams. It may well be that an oneiric activity may have also its biological substratum oriented towards the goal of granting neuronal integrity and memory elaboration. But nothing, absolutely nothing, in the psychoanalytical approach obstructs or stands in the way of neural sciences: the two goals, the psychological one and the physical one, may not only coexist but, as a matter of fact, they might even be... cooperating! It is, as hinted at the beginning, only a consequence of having misunderstood the Oedipus Complex what may lead neurologists who are extremely competent in neurology but scarcely acquainted with psychonalaysis to mistake the Oedipus Complex for a contender. Nothing in psychoanalysis jeopardizes neurology. And yet one still really needs to account also for such stunning oneiric plots so pervicaciously oriented in one recurring and nearly obsessive direction: the parental one. If we mistake the Oedipus Complex by its vulgate namely a child who wants to have sexual intercourse with the parent of the opposite sex, we may miss the real meaning of the Oedipus Complex. Speaking of a sexual desire about the Oedipus, is only the convenient synthetic syntagm to signify that what we see activated in these dreams is the whole range of actions that an extremely passionate (and also extremely immature... as the age of the child might warrant, actually) lover might enact in real life in order to win the love and affection of a craved counterpart and to gain the unconditional possession of the girl/man of his/her most diehard yearnings. This is a finding; maybe the representational unit or name («Oedipus») is not of our liking, but it is still just a conventional name to mean a wider context and plot which nonetheless and positively exists and needs to be accounted for - the alternative being very unscientifical, namely... ignoring it or brushing it aside as something that does not really need to be explained. Now, saying it is a love story is much more than, say, an "educated guesswork": it really seems the explanation of the plot. It is not that this explanation («it is a love story») would have been unlikely: it is rather the contrary. That is, it would rather be another and different explanation («it is nothing», «it is a child who needs more toys», «it is a spoiled child», «it is just imagination - very consistent but, well, just imagination») to be unlikely. Indeed, these oneiric plots seem desperate love stories: imagining that they are not what they so much seem to be, is what would be needed to be demonstrated (and not the other way round) for such dreams protest and «demonstrate» vehemently and repeatedly for their... face value! And here comes the hypothesis: this happens because the child, while his/her encephalic system matures, necessarily begins to experience the whole gamut of emotions and pulsions that such encephalic system is designed to produce (in the limbic system) and to manage (in the cortex). With the ripening of the structure come the functions. And please note that among these many functions there is also sexuality as one of the most capital ones. Can you now imagine a very young cortex having to deal for the first time with the whole emotional baggage and imprinting of human emotions and with pulsions of such sweeping an importance? The child has to cope. Indeed, childhood is no happy age. As soon as the lymbic system begins to be better synchronized and connected with the cortex, and the pathways begin to be laid, the implied functionalities erupt, and the cargos begin to transit. As an aside, it is immediately apparent what ominous consequences it could have a misplacing of the neuronal joints preposed to administer such emotions and pulsions, if something goes awry (and with a dysfunctional parent, much may go awry!) at such premature and defining moment, with a very young human being still in becoming. This occurs at an early age. It is not coincidence, in fact, that Freud's findings allocated the first emergence of the Oedipus Complex between 3 and 5 years of age, after which there is a relapse and again a last re-emergence - around 13 years of (well, teen...)age. The hypothesis (after the finding) is that the child, as a young human being eager and ready to run the first tests and to laborate his/her capacity to relate with other human beings as one of the most critical functions that his/her biological system demands of him/her, finds the most natural object for such exercises in his/her parents (though a substitute human character may do as well, were such a character persistently present in the life of the child). The rest, either you can imagine it or, well, you know it.

That ^ presumes that the Oedipus complex is undoubtedly real, yet where is the supporting evidence? It is an assumption. The problem with Freud is that his theories do not stand up to scientific theory, i.e., they are not testable. This is one main reasons that it has fallen out of favor, mainly in a lack of efficacy in comparison to other more testable perspectives. Also, most of the lingo you provided are most likely only to be seen in a small sliver of a history and systems of psychology textbook.

[Alberto]

Originally Posted by joeleoj To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

That ^ presumes that the Oedipus complex is undoubtedly real, yet where is the supporting evidence? It is an assumption. The problem with Freud is that his theories do not stand up to scientific theory, i.e., they are not testable. This is one main reasons that it has fallen out of favor, mainly in a lack of efficacy in comparison to other more testable perspectives. Also, most of the lingo you provided are most likely only to be seen in a small sliver of a history and systems of psychology textbook.

I am not seeking for proselytes you see.

If one cannot see that the spoiler already dealt with the evidence topic, it would be totally pointless (by me) to keep repeating what has been already said (by me).
If one has not time or will or interest to read and understand it, I am perfectly fine with it: I don't deem myself so interesting - at best, I only hope I can provide some meaningful insight for those who may be trying to understand what Freud may have said and why it matters.

ps I don't know what "lingo" is because English is not my native language and my dictionary does not report this term unfortunately. However I don't read manuals - I read the whole works of Freud and Jung, nearly all of Horney, Rogers, Maslow, Adler, Mitscherlich, McDougall and James Hillman, so my knoweldge of the topic, under a theoretical point of view, is founded upon having dealt with the works of the actual authors and not with accounts written by others.
Then, I also had to fight that monster myself - and that is when you truly understand. Indeed, I don't believe that one may actually understand how devastating and true these topics and "teories" can be if one has never been there fighting the monster him/herself with short blades in an all out fight - it's either It, or you, and no prisoners are gonna be taken.

[joeleoj]

Originally Posted by Alberto To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

I am not seeking for proselytes you see. If one cannot see that the spoiler already dealt with the evidence topic, it would be totally pointless (by me) to keep repeating what has been already said (by me). If one has not time or will or interest to read and understand it, I am perfectly fine with it: I don't deem myself so interesting - at best, I only hope I can provide some meaningful insight for those who may be trying to understand what Freud may have said and why it matters. ps I don't know what "lingo" is because English is not my native language and my dictionary does not report this term unfortunately. However I don't read manuals - I read the whole works of Freud and Jung, nearly all of Horney, Rogers, Maslow, Adler, Mitscherlich, McDougall and James Hillman, so my knoweldge of the topic, under a theoretical point of view, is founded upon having dealt with the works of the actual authors and not with accounts written by others. Then, I also had to fight that monster myself - and that is when you truly understand. Indeed, I don't believe that one may actually understand how devastating and true these topics and "teories" can be if one has never been there fighting the monster him/herself with short blades in an all out fight - it's either It, or you, and no prisoners are gonna be taken.

I'm not so invested in this that I am going to dissect or get into the minutiae of your ~2000 word post, but I would say that its portrayal of science is a bit black and white (its method can be used outside of a laboratory) and the description of dreams (as always having a "plot") as being quite easily explained by the activation-synthesis model. However, the two (Freud's theories and neuroscience) can coexist, but I think possibly more at the cost of Freud's ideas than the curtailing of neuroscience. I think that seeing Freud's Oedipus complex as a loose metaphorical example could be useful, but that going beyond that runs into all kinds of methodological pitfalls. Interestingly enough I saw this today, which compared the oedipus complex with a neurological description:


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