A Fine Line between Normality and Abnormality

[coberst]

A Fine Line between Normality and Abnormality

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Michaelangelica]

Freud was a nut case.
The whole concept of abnormal normal is a social 'construct'
The society one lives in decides what is normal or abnormal.

Read R. D Laing and others on this.

[HydrogenBond]

The brain has two centers of consciousness. One is conscious and the other unconscious. A loose analogy is a robot with its own internal programming and prime directive, which is unconscious. The second is a remote control system that the conscious mind has control over. If both are going in the same direction it appears like one center. But in those situations, were the two control systems are in conflict, the two centers are easier to see. That is the repression affect where the remote control system tries to override internal programs, so there is programming conflicts.

Let me give an example. We all get hungry because the body needs food. Even without the conscious remote control, i.e., will, the body already has this programming. The baby knows to eat at birth. It is preprogrammed that way before it develops the conscious remote control. Once it develops that it can make choices. Humans are omnivores, so this will also satisfy the food requirement. But the remote can go to the feedbag too often or not enough relative to the natural set point.

The pleasure principle is important, but it is actually a carrot on a string. Food is pleasurable. But if you look at the bigger picture, the goal is fuel for the body. This carrot on the string leads the horse to nutrients. But in terms of the remote control, the carrot is often seen as the goal. But being on a string, dangling at a slight distance, the horse gets to nibble as it swings back and forth but is never satisfied but keeps walking and trying to get it. It is always seeking the pleasure, indirectly satisfying a prime need.

The prime directive software has many secondary goals and many carrots on the string which motivates the ego to use the remote control to follow in the approximate direction. But often consciousness fixates on the carrot. This is even taught by science. The conscious mind might begin to twist its head about, trying to get the carrot and therefore represses the final goal or set point the inner center has in mind. There are so many variations for getting the carrot the driver of the buggy often can't get to the real goal in a timely manner.

[coberst]

Most all of our opinions are formed as a result of learning by social osmosis. Most of what we learn through this process is erroneous. Our task is to study our opinions and to adjust them in light of what we can learn by studying the giants from the past who have carefully studied such things.

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

The dividing line is a practical one. If I can function at my job I am normal if not I am abnormal.