memories of you
have lost all their leaves
my hands (through and through)
are lost in their sleeves

for summer I save
my winter thoughts
a life of commands
ends with forget me-not

My Bellerophon complex.

I had a dream:

I'm driving my father's old work truck and return with it to what seems like a construction site. I park the truck (maybe in an area that is too nice because its an old, dirty work truck). My brother arrives to move it and the tone feels like our old critical, unforgiving rivalry. He moves the truck near the edge of a cliff and I see that he doesn't properly set the brake. The truck is still rolling and I get in and try to stop it but can't. I have to jump out and it goes over and crashes. I feel responsible but very quickly explain to my brother how it is his fault. I convince myself it is his fault as I'm telling him but in the need to do so I detect that I'm not sure myself or can't trust that others will see it that way. This culminates in me reminding my brother that our father said that when that truck gives out that's when he will be finished. This becomes greater than any individual blame.

Lying as guilt forerunner

I've argued in previous posts that guilt as feeling badly about intentions and the internal push to come clean about one's trespasses occurs at the father complex/phallic trito. However, both Nietzsche in his Genealogy and Chasseguet-smirgel in her work on the ego ideal posit honesty and promise-making as  an earlier form of conscience. Alexander Lowen also interestingly argues that lying shows an increase in independence and separation from the parents and is an important landmark.

Lying as guilt does make for an interesting transitional stage in which one transgresses one's "word" and there is no doubt bad feelings possible about the intention to lie as well as feelings of shame afterwards.

Being ashamed of oneself is very close to guilt but decisively the feeling of equality with peers in the community isn't there.

It's also possible to see the semblance of a value system in the various promises one has made to "honor" an agreement but this is still far from the array of ideal values that are supposed to be autonomously chosen. The relations to parental substitutes and loyalty to them is what would imbue the promise with power.

More to come...

"The phallus is a semblance"

I was directed to read Laplanche on Freud's Copernican revolution by an editor because I used the term in my work. It's surprising to read how Lacanians give so much reverence to Freud only to paternalistically criticize his premises and conclusions since they don't refer to language (semiotics). Freud explicitly sets his revolution in the tradition of Schopenhauer, but for Laplanche this is Freud "denying the originality of his discovery".  He also criticizes Freud's phylogenetic ideas for "recentering man among living things," which is a great example of how what is a slobbering stupidity in the mouth of the religious fanatic, somehow becomes high theory once Lacan is associated with it.

After reading the article it's hard to see what Freud actually contributed to psychoanalysis other than to save a seat for Lacan (that his followers could later claim to be a throne).

The goal of good scholarship is to be able to account for as much in the text as possible with one's formulations. To also find the thinkers overall sensibility, and the contradictions in it, and put a nice frame around the original picture.

The goal isn't to fixate on a footnote and use it as an opportunity to give a monologue on famous thinkers throughout history in order to let others know that you've read them in their native language.

Isn't this just intimidation? Isn't this just another way for egoists to control knowledge by passing off all their memorization as wisdom?

Behind the semblance of intellectual potency, it is no doubt the patient who loses as the altruists ignore their phenomenological insights and search for the hidden, deeper meaning in slavish devotion to their father-substitutes.

But make no mistake, to overcome the Cartesian error the altruist must teach the egoist to overcome his solipsism and the egoist must teach the altruist to overcome her theism.

"Pride is not all of one kind"

Biddy says of Joe Gargery in Great Expectations "he may be too proud to let any one take him out of a place that he is competent to fill, and fits well and with respect"

Also, there is loyalty to Pip in which pride wouldn't let Joe ruin Pip's great expectations by trying to become more sophisticated himself and make Pip's acceptance depend on his acceptance.

Karen Horney was right and pride is the mark of the nuclear complexes.

There is no writer with an eye for ugliness but with such liveliness and exuberance as Dickens.

subject altruist- fusion- defusion- primal scene- Frances Ha

I've posted about how The Hobbit illustrates the antigone complex in its fused form. The father-substitute makes Bilbo Baggins feel like isn't strong enough to be on the mission and he'll just hold them back or get hurt.

In defused form or in Antigone's castration complex there are proto-phallic or phallic-deutero regressions. On one hand the subject altruist can take the father's place and try to be the rescuer, defender, or generally sacrifice oneself for the object or others in general. On the other hand, independence can be continued but it requires a twin, helper, or someone to face it with (which of course isn't very independent but, all of the libidinal positions have their different senses of words like beauty, intelligence, and independence).

In the primal scene repetition there has long been a 'pseudo-stupidity' attached to the masochistic (echoistic) character. I've expressed that Freud's seen the primal scene as related to a form of the epistemophillic drive and it seems clear that a reaction formation can occur that makes digging for secrets and understanding become the opposite of not understanding anything.

I think the film Frances Ha by Noah Baumbach has a great eye for the primal scene loss of one's twin or helper and also the pseudo-stupidity of the character. The title of the film itself comes from the titular character who putting her name on her mail box and choosing to fold over the last name instead of folding over her first name.

I want to write more about it, but for whoever is having a hard time understanding passive-altruism the film provides a very subtle presentation of it.

subject altruism: the antigone complex in defusion

In a previous post I have attempted to outline the structure of the Antigone complex

http://psychoanalysis-tcp.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-nuclear-complexes-antigone.html

After the defusion from the father imago the OA has two directions

She can 1. give up on her own independence and revert to drives to restore or rescue the name, reputation, or legacy of the father-substitute

Antigone sacrifices herself for the recognition of her brother

2. seek to continue her independence but has the need to enlist a helper or someone to do so

Antigone tries to enlist her sister to help

I think that this helper, who is often idealized, is probably a mother substitute.

The most important thing in this work is to find common examples or "seduce the senses" as Nietzsche puts it.

With some recent patients I've been thinking about the phenomena of the girl/woman who needs a friend to go out with her when she's going to meet a guy and how they have to go to the bathroom or take breaks to have conversations with each other. The altruist doesn't feel like she can do it on her own.

In the ego drives, as opposed to the object drives, the SA similarly needs a "study buddy" or someone who is there to help her or him do the work. If not to actually do the work, the helper has to be there so the SA can concentrate and do it to.

This makes me think of the form of the hero known as "the twins". While in the Antigone complex the helper is there just so that the SA can get by the father complex/phallic trito version (as the parallel between Heracles and Theseus) would be more than getting by but actually achieving something.

It never occurred to me before but the use of Medusa's head in the legend of Perseus can be symbolic of the use of the idealized friend to overcome the dangers/challenges. After the phallic deutero stage of the rescue of Andromeda the head is given to Athena which would be the concession to the incest taboo. Afterwards, the oracle is fulfilled by Perseus killing his grandfather. There are variants of what happens here and I'll have to do more investigating into this and myths of the "twins" overcoming obstacles together.