freud's drive theory

okay, here's my take on this...

Freud's drive theory involves two drives: sexuality and aggression. His sense was that pathology comes not from the original id based, pleasure seeking motivated by these drives,  or the subsequent anxiety and guilt about them, but the unconscious defense against them. The libido is sexual energy, a power and movement located in the body. His psychosexual stages look at how we experience pleasure and aggression in our early life. The oral stage is a time when we experience the pleasure of our mother's breast and take all of the nourishment we need in through our mouths. During weaning, we experience the pain and anguish of needing to give this up, of being castrated (denied unbarred access to our gratification.) This happens again during the anal stage, as we are made to inhibit our desire to eliminate when ever we want; the demands of others become more important than our pleasure gratification. During the Oedipal stage, we direct all of our libidinal desires toward the parent of the opposite sex. Realizing that we can't have this person, that they won't be entirely ours, is another devastating disappointment. This is about growing up, tolerating the disappointments and frustrations of the world's demands on us. Okay, I'll use a sippy cup, go in the big potty and mommy or daddy won't be here to meet my every need forever.

These are all castrations; thwarted desire, being told no. Neurosis is an attempt to alter this unbearable reality. We inhibit our desire because it is too painful to grieve this loss. In the myth, the goddess Psyche is eternally wedded to Eros;  Freud saw pathology of the soul as it's divorce from erotic love . Symptomatic acts and dreams illuminate repressed hidden desires that cannot be tolerated in our conscious mind. As we bring the light of our awareness to this disowned energy, we can reclaim it, make choices about what we do with it. Sublimation is to pull this energy up into a higher place. Much of the work I do with clients involves reclaiming repressed or lost aspects of their aliveness and Freud's thinking is a another frame for me to hang this work on.

Inside Job: wall street's unbarred access to gratification

el venado no ve nada...

My friend hosted a tamale making party last night and we played loteria. This game is full of archetypal images and there are zen riddles on the back of each card...
LA SIRENA: Con los cantos de sirena no te vayas a marear.
The Mermaid: Don't get dizzy with the songs of the mermaid.
EL SOL: La cobija de los pobres.
The Sun : The blanket of the poor.

unknowable and unsayable

In what Lacan calls "the real", there are experiences that we have no context for/we can't understand. Whatever exists in the real is terrifying, we have no words for it, but our bodies hold the experience. Trauma creates a language all it's own because it creates an excess that is unbearable. This gap in knowing gets repeated in playing, speaking, or acting out in order to elaborate on the unsayable experiences. These effects manifest in the body; the language around events or the unsayable, is embedded in speech.
Bion describes something very similar to this in a strange way using mathematical representations, but I take something very similar away from it... that we have beta elements- unprocessed anxiety, pain, dread that is beyond our capacity to even think about or understand (alpha function) and that as an analyst, you can be helpful to clients by tolerating these beta experiences that emerge in session. The capacity to hold feelings, reverie, somatic stuff without knowing about it, facilitates it's birth into a thinkable form. In this way, we can act as an alpha function. Sometimes experiences show up in the therapist's body, reverie, dreams, before it ever comes into the therapy on a conscious level.
I've been thinking about Martin Luther King saying that we are "caught in an inescapable network of mutuality"...

going on being

Winnicott’s ideas about the mind body split and environment really influence the kind of therapy I value. His thinking was that a good enough environment means having caregivers that are able to adapt to your developing psyche soma; there is support and a gradual pulling back of support, an active adaptation. A “bad” environment can’t adapt, you have to be taken out of your development if this active adaptation isn’t happening. The child prematurely develops intellectual capacity that takes them out of their body and this chronic impingement breaks the mind body connection, they have to become their own little parent.

In therapy, the good enough therapist creates a holding environment that supports the reintegration of this psyche soma split. The therapist is able to contain and hold unnameable experience. The unconscious has always held the mind body connection. Early affect is bodily sensation; this cannot be put into words, so we can’t communicate it verbally. He also explains that in childhood transitional space, we are bringing potential to actuality, fantasy to reality. As we play out unconscious ideas and fantasies our “going on being” blossoms. If there are impingements on this transitional space, a false self is created; all of life becomes one big impingement. In therapy, we can repeat this; the client is trying to create an experience of transitional space to reconnect them with their own striving. We want them to have a flow where their knowing can emerge and they can discover their potentialities. As therapists, we have to give them the space to pick up the ball, encourage their “going on being”. If we impinge on this we recreate early experiences and fail to help them move back into their authentic self. The therapist’s capacity to tolerate not knowing can prevent a lot of this. As a therapist, I want to allow my clients to unfold, to give them room to reconnect mind and body.

I am thinking about how this work fits with Gestalt, focusing and Tolle's power of now. Present moment awareness brings us back from an ego identified place into the fullness of our aliveness. I have been experiencing my own going on being as I walk through the beauty and color of the tree canopied and leaf layered streets in midtown.

Eminem - Not Afraid

holla if you feel like you've been down the same road

It looks like Eminem is going to receive a Grammy for his latest album Recovery and while he isn't on any of my play lists, I understand what everyone loves about him. His invincible spirit, rebellious charm coupled with an ability to be vulnerable and transparent shake people up. I really think main stream folks wanna wake up, be raw and get down to brass tacks- this just isn't modeled in popular culture. Rap is so therapeutic and his not afraid video is full of larger symbolic meaning. I guess I just think it is important to process your relationship with your mom, suicidal tendencies and what it's like to grow up in a broke ass neighborhood (if you did) and doing this with creativity and bounce is a good thing.