Category Archives: Psychology

Double Indemnity and Jung

12 Wednesday Jan 2022

Posted by in Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

Double Indemnity, a film noir of 1944 directed by Billy Wilder concerns two sets of doubles. There is the “double indemnity” of the insurance policy: in the case of certain rare forms of death, the accident insurance policy will pay double the face value. In the case of this story, a $50,000 policy will pay $100,000 if the death occurs on a train. There is also a second, psychological and moral doubling of the characters.

Briefly, the story concerns a plot by insurance salesman Walter Neff and discontented second-wife, Phyllis Dietrichson  to murder Phyllis’s husband on a train to collect the double indemnity payment. But the real point of the story is the judgment upon Neff.

The story is framed by the wounded Neff struggling into the insurance headquarters in the middle of the night. Neff comes to his office and there dictates a confession to insurance fraud examiner Barton Keyes.

This creates an interesting doubling in the structure of the story. At the primary level, the story concerns the confession and judgment of Neff’s fraud and murder. Keyes suspects fraud and murder, but Keyes has failed to suspect his friend Neff as the criminal. (In fact, Keyes has even invited Neff to join him as a fraud investigator.)

At a secondary level is the play-out of the plot. The story is told from the perspective of Neff. Most of the movie consists of watching the characters play-out Neff’s confession.

The doubling begins prior to the opening of the action. “Mr. Dietrichson” was previously married. Phyllis attended the late wife as the wife’s nurse. After the wife died, the widower married the nurse.

Our story opens with Neff coming to the Dietrichson house (a “$30,000 house” in the Los Feliz district of Los Angeles). Neff is there to obtain a renewal on the Dietrichson car insurance policy.

While there, Phyllis asks if Neff sells accident insurance.  This starts the plot moving.

The perplexing thing about this plot is how quickly and easily Neff advances on this plot. Phyllis has had the opportunity to develop bitterness toward her admittedly difficult husband. But Neff instantly sees the plot and moves the scheme along even more quickly than Phyllis. Phyllis presents the opportunity to commit the crime, and also draws out Neff’s lust.

The lack of development of Neff’s joining into the plot is curious. In the first meeting with Phyllis, he comes onto her with remarkable aggressiveness.  The meeting ends with her telling Neff to come by in the evening, but then leaves him a message at work to come by Thursday afternoon.

At this meeting, Neff accuses her of wanting the accident policy so that she can murder her husband and take the money. The exchange reads as follows:

            NEFF

       Who’d you think I was, anyway? A guy

       that walks into a good-looking dame’s

       front parlor and says “Good afternoon,

       I sell accident insurance on husbands.

       You got one that’s been around too

       long? Somebody you’d like to turn

       into a little hard cash? Just give

       me a smile and I’ll help you collect.”

       Boy, what a dope I must look to you!

              PHYLLIS

       I think you’re rotten.

              NEFF

       I think you’re swell. So long as I’m

       not your husband.

              PHYLLIS

       Get out of here.

              NEFF

       You bet I will. You bet I’ll get out

       of here, baby. But quick.

Shortly thereafter, Phyllis shows up at Neff’s apartment (his address is in the phone book). Just before she arrives, Neff makes the following confession:

            “It had begun to rain outside and I watched it get dark and didn’t even turn on the light. That didn’t help me either. I was all twisted up inside, and I was still holding on to that red-hot poker. And right then it came over me that I hadn’t walked out on anything at all, that the hook was too strong, that this wasn’t the end between her and me. It was only the beginning.”

After she enters, they are overcome with passion. Each says to the other, “I’m crazy about you.” And crazy they are.

Neff knows it is wrong. He knows that Keyes will figure it out – and also that he can outsmart Keyes.  But what are we to make of this double, Neff and Phyllis?

She seems to be functioning in the story as “The Shadow” of Jungian psychology (one does not need to subscribe to Jungian psychology to see its forms being used in a narrative; many writers deliberately incorporated Jungian forms into their writing; e.g., Star Wars):

The shadow is a moral problems that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort.  To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge, and it therefore, as a rule, meets with considerable resistance…. Closer examination of the dark characteristics—that is, the inferiorities constituting the shadow—reveals they have an emotional nature, a kind of autonomy, and accordingly an obsessive or, better, possessive quality. Emotion, incidentally, is not an activity of the individual but something that happens to him. (The Portable Jung, Hull, Campbell, Penguin, p. 145)

Neff’s discussions with Phyllis proceed in such a manner as if he already knows all that she wants and is leading her out even as he desires her.

Phyllis and Neff will eventually murder Mr. Dietrichson and throw his body from the train.

The dead husband functions as a sort of double to Neff. He is what Neff should have been (Keyes and Neff even discuss why neither has ever gotten married). Neff disposes of domestic structures when he murders a husband along with a wife who murdered a wife.

Another double comes to the fore after the murder. The daughter of Dietrichson’s first marriage, Lola (a rival of Phyllis) and Neff take up a sort of relationship. This one is not romantic and certainly not lustful. It is more of a father for a daughter. In Jungian terms she is the “anima”. She is a sort of soul, and “possesses all the outstanding characteristics of a feminine being.” (151)

Lola is thus a double to Phyllis, a double of innocence in contrast to the seduction and murder of Phyllis, but also a double to Neff. Lola interestingly discloses two important facts to Neff. First, from Lola Neff learns that Phyllis acted to kill the first wife by leaving the windows open during a storm when the first wife was dying from pneumonia in her bedroom. Second, Lola tells Neff that Phyllis was trying on mourning attire prior to the murder.

And thus, one aspect of Neff’s double informs on the other aspect of Neff’s double.

There is one other double to Neff, Nico. Nico is Lola’s boyfriend. From Keyes, Neff learns that Nico has been visiting Phyllis at her house at night ever since the murder: this is also when Neff had stopped seeing Phyllis so as to avoid suspicion.

Nico is sort of a stunted version of Neff, and also a more naïve Neff.

On the final night of the story, Neff confronts Phyllis in her house. Phyllis shoots Neff but does not kill him. Neff approaches and she says she loves him.  Neff takes the gun and kills Phyllis. Outside the house, he waits for Nico. He stops Nico, tells him to leave and go back to Lola

            “She’s in love with you. Always has been. Don’t ask me why. I couldn’t even guess.”

And thus, he rescues Nico. It is now, when a wounded shoulder that he returns to the insurance office and there begins to dictate his confession to Keyes.

In Jungian terms, Neff integrates and then dispatches his Shadow by receiving help from his Anima. He also redeems by the whole by presenting his integration to a sort of Father who judges and in a last act then shows mercy to Neff.  (In the final scene, Keyes shows up at the office, having been tipped off by the janitor. It is still night. Neff makes his confession. When Neff collapses due to loss of blood, he takes out a cigarette. Neff has repeatedly provided a match for Keyes whenever he smokes a cigar. This time, Keyes in an act of kindness lights Neff’s cigarette.)

An observation on “A Neuroscientist Prepares for Death”

10 Monday Jan 2022

Posted by in Apologetics, Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

In a recent article in The Atlantic, A Neuroscientist Prepares for Death, a poor man who has learned he will soon die from cancer of the heart provides his philosophical reflection concerning the possibility of an afterlife. Using his expertise as a scientist, he makes a series of three unwarranted jumps to deny an afterlife.

Lut us begin with the scientific proposition, “Now we know that rather than merely reacting to the external world, the brain spends much of its time and energy actively making predictions about the future.” This statement is metaphysically loaded, because it attributes all thought to a physical process, “the brain.”

His conclusion about the “brain” as opposed to a mind goes well beyond anything in observational science. The fact that certain brain functions are associated with a particular mental state does not mean the brain processes are that mental state. The mental state is itself unobservable, it can only be subjectively experienced. The relationship between a brain state and a mental state is a matter of tremendous dispute, but it is simply lazy to collapse thought into synaptic firing.

The second error in his argument comes when concludes that since we anticipate the near future, we cannot anticipate not anticipating the future. “And because our brains are organized to predict the near future, it presupposes that there will, in fact, be a near future. ” But this conclusion actually goes beyond the observation that the brain works to predict the future. There is no reason that the brain could not predict its demise. Our inability to imagine the future cannot be explained simply on the basis that the “brain” makes predictions about the near future.

From the observation that we do not imagine our non-existence, a state he refers to as a “widespread glitch”, he makes a theological/philosophical observation. The widespread religious belief in an afterlife is simply the result of a cognitive glitch which itself results from the mental action of anticipating the future.

But this last step is as lacking in necessary inference as the previous steps. A. The argument also entails a number of other unstated propositions. For instance, the argument assumes that there is no such a thing as an afterlife, and thus the belief must be explained by some material process.

B. The fact there are physical processes consistent with a particular belief does not make the belief untrue. Why would a religious belief have to be inconsistent with physical function to be true? There is no necessity that a religious belief be inconsistent to physical function.

C. Our inability to imagine our nonexistence does not make belief in an afterlife false. The argument that “belief in an afterlife cannot be true because it is comforting” is simply false. When I am ill, I believe that I will recover. On all prior occasions in which I have been ill, I have believed that I will recover–which is a comforting thought. And it was a true comforting belief: I have always recovered.

He ends with the observation that he is not adverse to the existence of an afterlife with those whom he loves.

What then is the purpose of an essay like this? We must remember it cannot be for career advancement, he will die soon. I can’t imagine that the prestige of writing for The Atlantic is sufficient as an explanation.

I think it is to deal with the fear of death. But in what way? His argument is that because I’m a scientist I know there is no afterlife. Why would he need to convince himself (an essay like this is an argument to convince you so that I feel more comfort in my belief) there is no afterlife?

As a Christian, I take it as a given that human beings fear the judgment which lies beyond death. If there is no continuation of life, there is judgment day coming after death. And so he strings out this rather insufficient argument to prove to himself there will be no future.

Hebrews 2:14–15 (ESV)

14 Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, 15 and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.

Social Media and Paranoia

07 Friday Jan 2022

Posted by in Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Interesting paper by Peter Nelson, Digital Neural Amplification in Academic Letters, October 2021. It relies upon an earlier paper in which Nelson argued that paranoia developed as a means of survival and entailed telling ourselves stories (“self-stories”) which ascribed a threatening force even without clear empirical evidence.

This system works much better when the threats are closer at hand, in “far less complex social systems.” Before I continue, I am not quite sure that is an accurate evaluation of our ancestors. While we certainly live amidst far more human beings and find ourselves routinely affected by the conduct of people in countries we have never seen, I don’t think that is the only environment in which our ancestors lived. The common animist and polytheist worlds in which most people lived involve enormously complex environments with extremely powerful figures at work. Their intentions and behaviors are difficult to ascertain, and they are easily offended.

I recall the testimony of a man in the 20th century who had been born into such an animist polytheistic world. He explained what a fearful world he inhabited. But Nelson’s theory was based upon an evolutionary premise that a maladaptive behavior present in contemporary society must be the hold-over from an earlier adaptive behavior.

I do think his second theory, in Digital Neural Amplification is on much firmer ground because is based upon a world we have experienced. He explains that we tell ourselves stories about the world around, to explain the people and circumstances we meet.

When we are fearful, when our “danger alert system is activated”, the self stories reflect that fear. We begin to add paranoid element even without conscious awareness. The fear becomes part of the explanation. Thus, increasing stress and fear will cause us to incorporate ever increasing stress and fear into our “self-stories.”

In pre-social media world, we could gossip to regulate and correct our self-stories. We would vocalize our beliefs which would then be tested by another. Moreover, gossip could alert us to actual threats which might be present but unseen. In social media we receive the various reports coming from a thousand sources as would previously received gossip. But this social media gossip comes to us without the additional social cues and full knowledge of the source. What we receive is the bare communication given in apparent seriousness.

These stories come to us in an overwhelming barrage which we cannot properly regulate and evaluate. The sheer number of such stories causes its own sense of fear and anxiety — which then causes one to create and to gravitate toward ever more similarly fearful stories.

The very nature of the medium creates the basis for the generation and perpetuation of paranoid explanations. As he writes,

The Facebook system, for example, intensifies the input into our paranoid ‘self-story’ production by increasing the rate of alerts and the perceptual complexity of the situation. This, in turn, drives the process into continuous looping for more input required to clarify and resolve the increasing cognitive dissonance caused by the variety, frequency, and ambiguity of input. A positive feedback loop is thus maintained as we are rewarded by incoming fragments offering partial resolution as well as being given ‘likes’ for our affirmative participation.

I would add that our inability to judge the value of the information is significantly increased by any number of cognitive limitations, or various cognitive biases, our inability to properly evaluate complex information.

Low and Free Cost Morality (Luxury Beliefs on a budget)

27 Wednesday Oct 2021

Posted by in Psychology, Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

,

A dashed-off note on an idea I may  develop later:

Today, a billboard in Los Angeles demanding the end of bull-riding got me thinking.

Rob Henderson writes of luxury beliefs, which he defines as follows, “Luxury beliefs are ideas and opinions that confer status on the rich at very little cost, while taking a toll on the lower class.” One trouble with luxury beliefs is that by their very nature they are a luxury. He gives examples of various luxury beliefs which could and do wreck havoc upon those who are left to pay the cost of such beliefs. 

When an affluent person advocates for drug legalization, or anti-vaccination policies, or open borders, or loose sexual norms, or uses the term “white privilege,” they are engaging in a status display. They are trying to tell you, “I am a member of the upper class.”

What of those who can’t afford such luxuries. Advocating for these positions is far more harmful to those in the middle class (even upper middle class which is a far more tenuous position than those a bit “further down” on the economic scale might imagine. A billionaire can simply live somewhere else; the white collar professional cannot. 

I wonder if there is another class of beliefs which are available to the college-educated but not truly wealthy. Yes, many will try to hold the luxury beliefs, but those beliefs come at a very high cost. If you are the head of a multinational corporation, “white privilege” used as a weapon really can’t hurt you. But if you live near the border, enormous numbers of exceedingly poor people coming through your town can be very expensive.

And so while the very wealthy can afford to displace their beliefs on those with less money, it is not always an option the upper middle class – or for those with even less economic clout. 

There seems to another category of beliefs which can be off-loaded onto the other – now often the political other. 

One can assert some sort of moral claim which must be enforced (luxury beliefs are typically in the name of permissiveness; these claims seem to be more in the form of a prohibition). I noticed this recently when I saw people on either side of the political divide complaining in a most uncivil manner about civility. 

This observation is not new in the least. There are any number of these demands stated in terms of moral prohibition which are demanded, though exclusively upon one’s political opponents. 

It is not precisely hypocrisy, which would be a knowing demand and disregard for some norm. The people asserting the prohibition seem to either believe that only the 
“other side” does these things or that the violation of the prohibition is morally permissible in this instance. 

An even purer form of this form of thought comes when the demand is made upon something I simply would never do. The bull-riding billboard in Los Angeles, far from any potential bull rider was fascinating. Rodeos are not a common occurrence in Sherman Oaks. While a few horses pace around the Equestrian Center in Burbank, and some more in Shadow Hills, there is no livestock in Westwood or Hollywood. 

Why then this demand to stop bull riding? This moral preening is even more pure than the other-side-does-it-only/more. There is always a possibility I could discover that “my side” is actually on the whole more profane, uncivil, or whatnot. But there is (almost) no possibility that Ventura Blvd. is suffused with Rodeo clowns – or even people who have seen a rodeo in person. 

To complain about bull-riding due to the “torture” (I believe that was the word on the sign) is completely free to the people who saw the sign. To demand civility might eventually mean I must be civil. But to cast moral aspersion upon something I simply could never even by accident do!

This permits to have a moral high ground without ever being forced to expend moral capital. I need do nothing and I am morally good and right!

It seems that such beliefs function in a manner similar to “luxury beliefs,” without the unpayable cost.  

A full taxonomy of beliefs, which ultimately function as various species of hypocrisy (moral permissions and prohibitions which do not apply to me, and always apply to you) would be interesting. 

Perhaps there are at least three, luxury beliefs, morally cost-free beliefs (bull-riding is bad), and morally low-cost beliefs (prohibitions which apply only to your, and rarely if ever to me and my side). 

We used conclude letters in the law with the words “dictated but not read”, which was an excuse for any barbarism in the syntax.

And for no reason, Jalama Beach, California

“Science”

05 Sunday Sep 2021

Posted by in Psychology

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

,

I’ve had a lot of friends sending me studies on masks and vaccines. I’m generally in favor of medical care and am of the opinion that whatever else may be true, a lack of polio and smallpox is a good thing. But as for whether this type of mask works at this level of effectiveness, I have no idea. As a practical matter, how could I? I have no expertise in any of this. I don’t know how to design a proper study, nor how to evaluate the results. I don’t know why the tests come back with different results.

I do know that a confirmation bias seems to underscore the results which I am shown. Those who think masks are magic send me one set of results. Those who think masks are fairy dust, send me a different set. Thus, the posting tells me something about the person who sent it, but perhaps it tells me nothing about the actual science.

Anyway, in my reading I came across this:

“There’s an ­unspoken rule in the pharmaceutical industry that half of all academic biomedical research will ultimately prove false, and in 2011 a group of researchers at Bayer decided to test it. Looking at sixty-seven recent drug discovery projects based on preclinical cancer biology research, they found that in more than 75 percent of cases the published data did not match up with their in-house attempts to replicate. These were not studies published in fly-by-night oncology journals, but blockbuster research featured in Science, Nature, Cell, and the like.” 

EMDR and Memory (and some questions)

21 Monday Jun 2021

Posted by in Psychology

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , ,

Reading a ‘Critically evaluate Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) as a treatment method for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)” by Milauro Giovanni of the University of Kent (a review the literature on EMDR for treating PTSD, particularly in respect to certain co-morbidities) got me wondering about memory. I jotted down a few questions to perhaps take up some other time.

The “point” of the therapy is to erase the effect of a peculiarly unpleasant memory and thus the negative effects upon behavior, cognition, and affections which come with that memory. (I’m being careful here to not say that the memory causes the negative behavior; there may be any number of relationships between a behavior or thought and a memory. But there certainly is some connection between the two). 

The unique aspect of EMDR is in the desensitization phase, which the APA describes as follows: “During this phase, the client focuses on the memory, while engaging in eye movements or other BLS. Then the client reports whatever new thoughts have emerged. The therapist determines the focus of each set of BLS using standardized procedures. Usually the associated material becomes the focus of the next set of brief BLS. This process continues until the client reports that the memory is no longer distressing.”

Somehow talking about the unpleasant memory while trying to keep track of the light causes the memory to fade in effect. 

Giovanni reports that studies have not shown a distinction between moving the light up and down as opposed to side-to-side. This seems to rule out the theory that the light movement is integrating the hemispheres of the brain.  

The other explanation for the effects of EMDR is that “the overcharging of working memory, that will lead to a less vivid memory of a traumatic memory and the related emotion.” (It should be noted that watching the light while discussing good memories, also results in good memories being less vivid.)

So, if I am understanding the research correctly, watching the light while speaking about a particular memory makes the memory less distinct.

There are some other observations which may be relevant here. First, there is a theory of dyslexia which explains certain effects as a failure of eye tracking and other effects as an inability to remember the correct sounds to visual image. It is as if the eye sees some X and the brain delivers a Y to the mouth. 

Second, years ago I received some advice following an unpleasant interpersonal experience: Every time I began to recall the unpleasant event, I was to pinch my hand and deliberately think of a particularly pleasant event in its place. 

Related to this would be the technique advanced by Jeffery Schwartz in “You are not Your Brain”. When my brain throws up a response to an unpleasant sensation (hey, why not get drunk/go shopping/etc rather than have this bad feeling), see this as a “deceptive brain message” and seek to repackage the event while heading in another direction: I’m feeling stress and my brain has grabbed my previous go-to response, but that is a terrible idea, let’s do this other productive thing in its place. In short, it is about reworking bad habits. 

If this analogy is correct, then EMDR may be breaking a habitual connection between the emotional/behavior/cognitive response to the memory and the memory itself. The memory functions like a key to start a habitual chain of responses. The therapy disconnects the chain of memory-to-panic/anger, et cetera. 

If it is merely a practice of disconnecting the memory from the responsive chain, is that always a good thing? Someone recalls the memory of being a victim of a crime. They respond with horror (and then perhaps some additional responses for the purpose of alleviating or displaying the horror). While I am certain that someone who has anxiety, inability to sleep, et cetera would be very happy to be freed from such painful experiences, does the disconnection of the memory from the chain of responses (as opposed to merely obscuring the memory), does this result in a desensitization to that particular stimulus in all events?

Say I am the victim of a violent crime who then suffers horrible memories and reactions to that crime. Thereafter, I undergo EMDR and no longer have that response. Am I desensitized to violent crime altogether? Or am I desensitized to only my particular memory?

Or, does it simply obscure the particular memory. The chain of memory to horror is still in place, but the first link in the chain (the memory) is removed so the remaining links do not arise.

Could the chain of memory and horror be reworked at the level of the horror? Is that what happens when someone turns to revenge rather than fear? (Anger is an easy substitute for fear). 

What happens when I recount the event in terms of (1) the sovereignty of God, (2) the knowledge that God will judge all sin, (3) that God will vindicate, (4) that we will receive “praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ”?  

Is this something which can be reworked at the level of thought? What additional behavioral responses are necessary to respond effectively such that the memory does not perpetuate a cascade of dangerous behavioral/emotional/cognitive responses?  

What is a human being, if you extirpate love?

04 Friday Jun 2021

Posted by in Love, Psychology, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

In The Criminal Psychopath, Jurimetrics. 2011 Summer; 51: 355–397, Kiehl and Hoffman provide a thorough summary of the history, diagnosis, and treatment of the psychopath, particularly with a view to amount of crime committed by this relatively small proportion of the population.

It raises the interesting issue of the degree to which the condition is the result of a brain disorder and the interaction with this brain in its environment. There is apparently some evidence that the condition has a genetic component, and perhaps it is a peculiarly vulnerable brain in connection with the “right” environment which leads to the exhibition of utter moral inability. Plainly performing standard experiments by tormenting and mistreating children in rigorously similar manners to see whether the condition can be induced regularly would be evil. Therefore, one needs to consider proxies, such as the condition shows some responsiveness to treatment if the treatment early enough in life.

That there is correspondence between the condition and certain brain function is interesting: But note that the information cited shows the functioning of the brain: their brains function differently. When faced with moral situations the parts of their brain which were involved differed from “you and me.” But what does that exactly prove? The argument that the brain is causing this condition actually contains a hidden premise: that all thought must begin from the brain, not pass through the brain.

For a moment take a different body part: the psychopath and the mother with her child both use their hands, but the use is strikingly different. No one believes that the mother hand causes her sweet caress.

Reddit Turned an MIT AI Into a Psychopath. What Is It Doing to Your Brain? | Inc.com

Now a mother with broken hands could not caress in the same manner. The status of her hand both limits and permits certain behavior, but it does not cause her behavior.

But when it comes to the brain, it is easy to believe that the brain is causative. This is because the functioning of rest of the body relies heavily upon the functioning of the brain. In particular, the use of the brain in thought could imply that the brain is directing the thought.

But need that be so? If one adds as an element of the human being a mind, it is no difficulty to concluded that the minds of two different men would use their brains in a different manner: just as the psychopath murders and the doctor heals with the hand.

If we posit that information flows from the body toward the mind and the mind toward the body, effects can move in both directions. (The precise nature of mind and body is not the issue. Although at present I am very intrigued by Dembski’s Being as Communion (information is the ultimate base, not matter) and Thomas’ hylomorphism which seems to resolve Descartes’ hard cleavage interaction problem.) Thus certain types of brains would have effects without being the univocal cause.

Another element in the article which intrigued me was “His very disconnectedness is his mask. We cannot see him because we assume all humans have the connections that bind us, and because the psychopath’s very lack of those connections allows him to mimic them.” The psychopath, to use the Ancient Greek term, is a-storge: he lacks human connections. The fact of storge among other humans creates the framework which the psychopath exploits: “One explanation is that being exposed to the frailties of normal people in group therapeutic settings gives psychopaths a stock of information that makes them better at manipulating those normal people. As one psychopath put it, ‘These programs are like a finishing school. They teach you how to put the squeeze on people.'”

They bear a resemblance to Nietzsche’s Nobility who know themselves better than all others and are willing to command and exploit. They also exhibit the final end of depravity in Romans 1.

What should think of them. The authors were hopeful there were ways to get the psychopaths to slow down a bit on their crime spree of life. But there really wasn’t any element of hope.

“As one psychotherapist wrote, his psychopaths in treatment ‘have no desire to change, … have no concept of the future, resent all authorities (including therapists), view the patient role as … being in a position of inferiority, and deem therapy a joke and therapists as objects to be conned, threatened, seduced, or used.'”

That reference to the “future” stuck out. It is not merely that they have no concept of future punishment, they have no mechanism for hope. Perhaps they can move by hungers, I want this-then-that, but would be based upon a present hunger. I might plan to fulfill my hunger, but not be different.

Authorities obviously are merely impediments to be beaten or seduced. That is easy enough. But without the future, without hope. That again is a state described in Paul as the depth of lostness, “having no hope without God in the world.”

Now we come to this character: no authority, no hope, no future. Such a man is ultimately depraved.

It is the cognitive capacity of a man without love: because love is built around the future. Love does not exult in oneself, but puts another first. Love becomes a sort of authority for the other’s good becomes paramount.

Freud on the “Freudian Slip”

23 Tuesday Feb 2021

Posted by in Freud, Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

The previous look at The Psychopathology of Everyday Life is found here.

            The “Freudian slip” is the most famous of all concepts from Freud. It occurs when someone reveals a hidden motivation by substituting the “wrong” word. As he begins this essay, Freud reviews the work done by Meringer and Mayor, and then the observations of Wundt. 

Freud underscores an element from Wundt – an element which Freud will enforce at the end of this essay: These slips of the tongue take place when there is a “suspension of the attention that it would inhibit it, the uninhibited flow of associations is activated and may be said, even more definitely, to do so through that suspension.” (60) As he says toward the end of the essay, “I do not think anyone would make a slip of the tongue [examples given], in short in all those cases where, as one may say, the mind is really concentrated on the matter in hand.” (96)

Freud rejects the argument that slips of the tongue are merely the result of confusing or substituting sounds of words. He does not deny that sounds of words can have an effect upon errors, and indeed may be the cause of some errors:

But they do not seem to me strong enough to impair correct speech by their own influence alone. In those cases that I have studied closely and of which I can claim some understanding, they merely represent an existing mechanism that can easily be used by a remote psychic motive without its binding itself to the sphere of influence of those connections. In a great many substitutions, a slip of the tongue occurs quite regardless of such laws of phonetics. (79)

Freud explains that he uses these slips to “resolve and track down neurotic symptoms.” (78) Patients “may try to conceal the subject, but cannot help revealing it unintentionally in many different ways.” 

He contends that his theory “will stand up to examination even in its minor details.” (95)

To support his contention, he notes dozens of instances where someone substitutes one word for another, and thereby discloses a secret they had hoped to conceal. 

I found most compelling the example he gave from the novel Egoist by George Meredith (I cannot agree with Freud that Meredith is the “greatest English novelist”). Without rehearsing the entire nature of the example, the proposition is that a woman in the novel, by a confusion of names reveals a secret hope and desire she tries to keep concealed – but cannot. Why I found this example compelling is that is an independent attestation by someone other than Freud (or a professional psychologist/psychiatrist) of the same idea.  Now, since Meredith was a rough contemporary of Freud, it is possible that such ideas “were in the air.” 

However, Freud provides an example from Shakespeare where Portia discloses herself by a slip.

Let’s take his concept seriously, that people sometimes say what they mean to conceal. I would think that best explained by the fact that a person is intently thinking about two things and is speaking with the hope of not saying something but the thoughts get the better of the tongue – we can’t concentrate on two things at once. For instance, Freud gives an example of where he is attempting to defend himself from a conflict with his wife and thus discloses something he did not wish to say.

But Freud has a rather different theory of what happens: He puts the emphasis on the unintended nature of the disclosure. In his theory, the concealed fact just finds a way out because sufficient control is not being brought to bear upon the speech so the unconscious makes a break for it. 

Yet, I think his examples could easily be re-read as not an unconscious escape but rather the conflict of multiple thoughts. 

For instance, he gives the example of where a soldier on trial for burglary used the word Diebstellung – position as thief – when he meant to use the word Dienstellung – military service.  The soldier made this blunder while testifying in Court. But it is in just such a circumstance that Freud said a slip would not occur, “in a speech made in defense of his name and honor before a sworn jury” (96). The soldier was trying to explain that he could not have committed the crime because he was still in the military: but he would at the same time be thinking of what he had been accused. 

If there are revealing substitutions, I don’t think he proves a subversive unconscious but rather a confusion of thoughts. 

Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic 4.4 (with some notes on current Church)

29 Friday Jan 2021

Posted by in Apologetics, Psychology

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , ,

The pervious post in this series concerning Rieff may be found here: https://memoirandremains.com/2020/08/28/philip-rieff-the-triumph-of-the-therapeutic-4-3/

In the remainder of the book, Rieff is going to examine what various disciples of Freud did with Freud’s original work. Thus, we will examine Jung, Wilhelm Reich, and D.H. Lawrence. But before he turns to these men who developed the ideas of Freud in strikingly different directions, Rieff considers those who make up the mass of psychoanalysts. In the main, Rieff has little good say about such practioners.

The fault, as I read Rieff, is that the analysts follow Freud so well. The practice of psychoanalysis is not to construct some new culture but rather to free one from the symbolic world which they have internalized. As such, it is a sort of indefinite project, but the world which followed Freud domesticated it, Freud “could cope with his enemies; his friends defeated him.” (85) 

Those who take up the practice have attended “trade schools” (89) who wish to take up a quiet, stable, “suburb[an]” life.

The need for conflict with opposing structures is necessary to keep the disciple alive, “As an ultimate rule of organization, honesty is death to organization itself. Reticence, forbearance, tolerance – these civilities and hypocrisies are necessary to organized life.” (91)

To that extent his epilogue is of little interest except as an observation. What I do find interesting is an observation he makes early in this section. He notes that orthodoxy is sharpened in conflict: which is a point Harold O.J. Brown made in his work Heresies.

It is at this point he makes a point which may be of some encouragement to Christianity at this point in the West, “Nowadays, the world is full of tame Christians; in consequence, the churches are empty of life, if not of people.” (84) The Church seems to suffer worse from excess of ease than even trial (which seems to be true for us personally as well).  Thus, our current conflict may be of use by putting the church into a position where it may critique the culture rather than be overly at home. 

While there are various positions which have been offered by many, such as Niebuhr’s Christ & Culture, (Christ Against Culture, Christ of Culture, Christ Above Culture, Christ and Culture in Paradox, Christ the Transformer of Culture), Luther’s Two Kingdoms, and so on. All of these positions have shown themselves to be useful at some times and places, and disastrous at others. 

When the Netherlands can elect a Kuyper as Prime Minister, Christianity is a position to influence culture in a way that the Baptist in the Gulag of A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich could never dream. When being an influence entails comprising, then the church must take a prophetic stance. There are issues on which the church has no dogmatic position (should the capital gains tax be 15% or 20% on securities held over five years but less than ten?). But there are issues where the Church – if it has a public voice, cannot remain silent.

There are issues of wisdom: At what point does one confront the state; at which point should the church retreat? The church in the West (this is not to prioritize the Western church, nor to ignore the very real troubles faced throughout the world; it is simply I know far more about where I live and what I experience than things which I learn secondhand. I simply wish to avoid speaking where beyond what I could reasonably know) is coming to face increasing troubles from a direction it did not expect. 

In the early 20th century, the church on one-side retreated from intellectual engagement with a hostile culture. Another element of the visible compromised. The space of engagement deepened theological positions in many areas and gave us an apologetic and social voice. 

Now we are facing an entirely new challenge for which the church broadly is not ready. Even the previous secular adversaries of the church have little idea on how to respond. But as Rieff noted in connection with Freud’s tame disciples, conflict can deepen and sharpen our thinking. Let’s pray that God gives us the wisdom for our age.

Rieff, Triumph of the Therapeutic 4.2

14 Tuesday Jul 2020

Posted by in Freud, Psychology

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , ,

(In Defense of the Analytic Attitude)

In the remainder of the chapter, Rieff distinguishes Freud from what came after.  The distinction which Rieff draws is between Freudian “freedom” and a “cure.” Freud offers no solution, only a “technology” which will allow one to understand the working of their subconscious. The end game, as seemingly proposed by Rieff would be the freedom from the “residues of religious compulsion.” (79) This may be achievable with a combination of Freudian analysis and behavioral technique. (Ibid.)

Freudian analysis “is the aim of science – power; in this case a transformative technology of the inner life….This is ultimate technology.” (79)

The purpose of “faith” is to mitigate suffering: “all religions have a therapeutic function.” (76) Jung sought to scoop up all religions with his theory of archtypes. An interesting observation is how Rieff sees Jung and Freud as inversions of one another. Freud understood “erotic instinctual forces” sublimate themselves into the “highest ethical and religious interests of man.” While Jung saw the process going in the other direction. (77)

Freud’s aim of “freedom” comes at a cost:

“What men lose when they become as free as gods is precisely that sense of being chosen, which encourages them, in their gratitude, to take their subsequent choices seriously. Put in another way, this means: Freedom does not exist without responsibility.” (79)

This freedom is of course something which is at issue. It is taken by everyone that Freud’s theories of pscyho-social development and dream analysis and slips of the tongue – however interesting – are unquestionably not “scientific.” His technology is simply untrue. 

What is strange is that his basic proposition that your sensation of ethical constraint is a trick society has played upon, that restraint is what is holding you back, mixed with Rousseau and Hegel and whatnot and developed by his followers (some who – as we shall see – were criminally insane) has become a default argument over against the “illusion” of religion and God. It is a curious sort of position to occupy. 

But on the same ground, by what basis do Hegel’s thesis-antithesis, Rousseau’s sociology, Marx’s economic history still have currency? It seems that people pick bits and pieces of ideas without ever well-understanding either what they believe or why. They could never articulate their axioms much less their conclusions. 

We live too easily in cages built of the thought of others. Freud in his effort to bring a technology of freedom foisted insupportable conceits upon the world. When his conceits proved to be nonsense, the conceits remained.