Freud & the unconscious: the waning of a myth

Note: This is the third time I’ve written on this topic, and although this piece contains whole paragraphs which are unchanged from my first two attempts to make sense of the theory – or theories – of the unconscious, I have nonetheless made some changes to the original wording as well as adding new paragraphs. In a recent programme, the magician, Derren Brown, said that it is not up to us to disprove a theory, but for others to prove a theory to us. I agree with that; nevertheless, where we find ourselves unconvinced, then I think it legitimate to point to apparent illogicalities. So it is that that this blog is a critique – if that is not too grand an expression – of the psychoanalytic concept of the (putative) unconscious. In my final paragraph I will suggest why I think that there is a certain irrelevance to the entire question – of the existence or otherwise of anything that may be labelled as an – or – the ‘unconscious’.

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It is almost certainly true to say that, in the world of psychology, nothing has caused more controversy, division, and bitter dispute than Freud’s theory of the unconscious: a hypothetical entity which, in his own words, had “its own wishful impulses, its own mode of expression, and its peculiar mental mechanisms which are not in force elsewhere.” It would seem almost as if we had imbibed this notion with our mother’s milk, so commonly is it accepted. Yet if we are to accept the existence of such an entity, then I think the question needs to be asked, “Is the Unconscious unconscious of itself?” If so, we are dealing with some kind of drive which – like sexuality – has no knowledge of us as human beings, and does not reckon consequences. I would have no quibble with this about the unconscious if I could understand its (unconscious) raison d'être. But I cannot. If it suppresses those experiences we have had which are too painful for us to acknowledge, then precisely by what means does it succeed in doing this? We are only too aware of the traumas, missed opportunities, and sadnesses of our past lives. And the problem – insofar as there may be one – is to acknowledge these experiences as ineradicable ‘tree–rings’ (and incorporate them as best we can into that ‘irreducible mystery’ that, finally, we all are).

I might say too, about ‘Freudian slips’ – where the truth of what we really feel about some person or issue slips off our tongue before we realise it – that these are not expressions of things of which we are unaware. They are in fact expressions – albeit involuntarily expressed – of emotions of which we are only too well aware.

However, is it not the case that Freud’s hypothetical Unconscious would need to be conscious of its activities if it were to decide which memories were to be suppressed from consciousness and which released into consciousness – and the optimal times at which these psychic mechanisms were to be operated? To solve this problem, psychoanalysis proposes the notion of a ‘censor’ – a ‘director of operations’, if you like. Here is Sartre on the subject in Being and Nothingness:

. . . it is not sufficient that it [the censor] discern the condemned drives; it must also apprehend them as to be repressed, which implies in it at the very least an awareness of its activity. In a word, how could the censor discern the impulses needing to be repressed without being conscious of discerning them? How can we conceive of a knowledge which is ignorant of itself? To know is to know that one knows . . . (Being and Nothingness, pp52–3. Italics in original. Hazel Barnes translation. Routledge. 1958)

. . . the hypothesis of a censor, [is] conceived as a line of demarcation with customs, passport division, currency control, etc., to re-establish the duality of the deceiver and the deceived. (Ibid, p50)

According to Sartre, then, it is not the unconscious that requires consciousness, but the censor – which psychoanalysts place as mediator between the unconscious and the conscious mind: that is, a second consciousness which operates according to unknown rules and remains concealed from our primary consciousness. It need hardly be stated that such a notion is absurd, and on a par with the invocation of ghosts, demons, and angels as silent operators. A standard description of Freud’s idea of the mechanism whereby unwanted thoughts are kept out of consciousness is given in the Encyclopaedia Britannica:

[Such thoughts] are censored and kept from consciousness unless altered into dream symbols, slips of the tongue, jests or some other acceptable guise. [My emphasis]

Again, how can a censor do its job unless it is aware – conscious – of what it is doing? If I were a film censor I would have to know exactly what I was doing.

It is a relief to turn to Adler, whose writing is clear and whose concept of the unconscious requires no dubious entities, and has no flavour of dogma or religion about it:

The unconscious is nothing other than that which we have been unable to formulate in clear concepts. It is not a matter of concepts hiding away in some unconscious or subconscious recesses of our minds, but of parts of our consciousness, the significance of which we have not fully understood.  

We cannot oppose “consciousness” to unconsciousness” as if they were two halves of an individual’s existence. The conscious life becomes unconscious as soon as we fail to understand it, and as soon as we understand an unconscious tendency it has already become conscious. (The Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler, pp232–3. Basic Books. 1956)

We might add that it would seem to be a logical impossibility for two consciousnesses to exist in one brain (mind?): each in a silent tussle with the other – and on behalf of what or whom exactly? Ourselves obviously, but what an Alice in Wonderland world do we here find ourselves in. Further, we talk about the unconscious when we don’t even understand the nature of consciousness.

Looking at the problem in general, I do not see why we should have a problem with the fact of unconsciousness – or ‘out of –mindedness’ – in the mind (and or brain?). Necessarily, it has to be the case that large tracts of our past experiences are for the most part not present to our conscious mind. Otherwise, if we were conscious simultaneously of all that we have ever experienced, we would seize up and go mad. So that there must be a universe of ‘stuff’ stored away, ready to be triggered by any chance event. I can give what I think are two watertight and perfect examples. In 2001 I visited St Leonards – where I lived until I was fourteen – and walked along a road I had not revisited in forty–three years. Passing the church in this road, I noticed a patterning in the brickwork that had held a particular significance for me as a child. What that significance was, I cannot possibly say: I did not know as a child and I do not know now. I think that it was related to aesthetics and the imagination (not that as a child I had any notion of describing aesthetics); but in any case its subjectivity was such that it would be impossible to explain. The main point is that I had entirely forgotten it for more than four decades. My second example – of the extraordinary ‘concealed retention’ of past experiences – comes from my twenties and thirties. After first visiting Florence in the 1970s, I had a recurring dream which featured a vaulted room. On a second visit to Florence – ten years later with my wife – I revisited the pensione I’d stayed in on my first visit. I took the lift to the top floor, and as I stepped out, there in front of me was the vaulted space that I had been dreaming about. There was no question about it: the recognition was instantaneous. And, as with my St Leonards experience, I think it had to do aesthetics and imagination. (And I fully acknowledge that without the writings of Freud, I could not have seen this with such clarity: Freud was a fine writer, and is perhaps best read as literature. He had uncanny insights into human nature, which did not require the quasi–scientific theories into which he tried to incorporate them.)

You may argue that the personal experiences I have related have nothing to do with the suppression of aspects of myself I was loath to recognise or acknowledge: I was not in denial or involved with the displacement of an emotion. This is perfectly true: my examples demonstrate rather the extraordinary capacity of the mind to store past experiences which would remain dormant – or in the one case puzzling – unless triggered by a precise ‘re–encounter’. However, I know perfectly well from my own experience and the observation of others that we can be quite unaware of the reasons for our actions or reactions – under certain circumstances. For example, a friend tells me that – when his wife returned from hospital with their second child – their younger child was up all night throwing up. He knew – yes, at an unconscious level – that things would never be quite the same again. But we do not need to invoke an ‘unconscious’ to explain this. Most of us understand these things perfectly well – as people have done for centuries. Richard Webster, in his Why Freud was Wrong, quotes these lines from Shakespeare’s King Lear:

Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand! / Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thy own back; / Thou hotly lusts to use her in that kind /  For which thou whip’st her. (IV, vi, 157–60)

Webster continues:

[A]lthough Freud invoked the idea of projection, he also impoverished it by pinning it into his own mechanistic system. Again and again Freud strangled in false science the very ‘poetic’ insights which he had glimpsed in imaginative literature. (Richard Webster, Why Freud was Wrong. Harper–Collins, revised edition 1996, xiii)

So why did I suggest in my first paragraph that the existence of any kind of entity that might be labeled ‘the unconscious’ is of little relevance? Because I think that the important thing to notice and understand is that human beings quite simply are unaware of their actions, reactions, and motives under certain circumstances – whatever the causes; and that it would be healthier for us if we could achieve a lively understanding of this. This being the case, it would seem that the invocation of an unconscious, accompanied by the arcane theories of psychoanalysis, can only throw an unwanted – and often deep – confusion over the matter. Sometimes a chair is just a chair. Shakespeare’s beadle certainly needed to be on a couch, but it was not that of a psychoanalyst.  

The lure of the screen & the perfidy of “must haves”

Research has discovered that people read online texts, whether blog posts or Facebook pages or news stories, in an F–pattern [first line reading]. Pressed for time, the reader races down, plummeting ever more quickly to the end of the article.

Slow Reading in a Hurried Age, David Mikics

This is how I imagine such a reading pattern might be represented:

I’ve been thinking about this for two reasons. First, I find it impossible to read continuous text online – and even print out long emails, so that I can concentrate on them properly. Second, as a blogger I wonder if anyone ever bothers to print out my blogs before reading them. Now, if they do not think them worth reading, fair enough: sometimes, at least, because I do not write down the first thing that comes into my head, and therefore the reader might just miss something that is, perhaps, just a little bit more interesting than a quick reading will reveal. Which makes me wonder, when I look at the stats (page views) of my blogs, just what they are telling me. Strictly, I am very much in the dark. Someone may have Googled Cézanne, and accessed one of my blogs on this painter. But that does not tell me that they have read it; or if they have, that they have paid attention commensurate to the subtleties I have attempted to describe. And, a few kind friends apart, I have not had any comments since December, 2013! Pointless to complain and that is not what I am doing. It is said – and I am sure it is true – that teachers get more out of teaching than the students they teach (for much of the time, at least). That’s how I tend to feel about my blogs: in writing them I am forced to think, to get things down in words, and often to change my mind about things. I gain a certain reasonable clarity, if not some fluency, in doing this. And if someone, somewhere out there – ever so occasionally! – gets something from this process, then that’s fine.

Endnote: I printed this piece out before posting it, and discovered some repetitions, an infelicitous sentence, and a redundant comma. There is nothing like paper in the hand (90 g/m+­² cream for preference!)

A sense of proportion

Having recently become a septuagenarian, it occurs to me more and more that I ought to let go of a great many things that have strongly exercised me in the past; and furthermore that my over–valuation of these things – which is to say ideas, writers, and certain books – has led to a certain degree of dogmatism, which is clean contrary to any kind of liberal and open–minded education. I go against the current of my own reading. Not always, by any means, but far too often. I am not entirely to blame in this, for as Emerson writes:

We are armed all over with subtle antagonisms, which, as soon as we meet, begin to play, and translate all poetry into stale prose. Almost all people descend to meet. All association must be a compromise, and, what is worst, the very flower and aroma of the flower of each of the beautiful natures disappears as they approach each other. What a perpetual disappointment is actual society, even of the virtuous and gifted! After interviews have been compassed with long foresight, we must be tormented presently by baffled blows, by sudden, unseasonable apathies, by epilepsies of wit and of animal spirits, in the heyday of friendship and thought. Our faculties do not play us true, and both parties are relieved by solitude.

There is undoubted truth in this, but anyone who has read Emerson’s essay ‘Friendship’ in Essays: First Series, cannot but agree with Oliver Firkin:

The essay on “Friendship” is the most discomforting and estranging performance in the entire volume. If he had stopped with his heartening motto, if he had even stopped with the two first warm–blooded lines – 

“A ruddy drop of manly blood / The surging sea outweighs,” –

He would have left us stimulated and inspired. But this is only the parting handshake on the wharf; the next moment he has weighed anchor, and is steering lustily into the polar sea of this immitigable essay.

But I diverge from my main idea of learning to let go of cherished ideas. In respect of which, I today discovered some lines I’d written inside the cover of an Ordnance Survey map:

The only means of strengthening one’s intellect is to make up one’s mind about nothing (peremptorily) – to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts, not a select party.

I presume that this was something I wrote down on a country walk. Certainly I had forgotten it – as well as what had occasioned the thought. It’s imperfectly expressed, but I’ll let it stand, ‘select party’ and all.

But there’s something to it, is there not? Should I be pugilist in defence of my own ideas? I think not. Because if I do, I betray my doubts, do I not? Well, since Emerson has had a fair monopoly in what I’ve written so far, I’ll bring him in again. I doubt that any other writer has had such an influence on me. And yet he has his detractors:

“The essays of Emerson”, T. S. Eliot wrote, “have already become an encumbrance . . .” And the American academics, William Morrow and Quentin Anderson both “see Emerson’s individualism as an expression of a lamentably infantile and retrograde personality.”

So what am I supposed to do: rage at these people and refuse to read their books? I think not. Better to read them and get a more rounded and critical–edged view of Emerson. Something in the light of this passage:

It is only the avoidance of a tight little dogma, the preservation of negative capability, that makes such a mind [as Emerson’s] interesting. And the student must be careful, as the hostile critic conspicuously is not, to avoid in his turn reducing him to an easy formula. Stephen E. Whicher, Freedom and Fate: An Inner Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

So there you have it! (Even though I would not accuse William Morrow and Quentin Anderson of being ‘hostile’.) I love Emerson, but I am not an Emersonian. If I were, I would be likely, at the least criticism, to explode with rage. And then, as Frank Kermode so succinctly expresses it, “abandoning meaning”, I would “slip back into the old comfortable fictions of transparency, the single sense, the truth.”

Ourselves & others / The pleasure of 'withdrawn' library books / Simenon as writer

Note: This blog has been moved to: http://peter7hart7.blogspot.co.uk/

The problem with happiness & other notes

I call my blog ‘Notes from the Boundary’. Perhaps that is what it should be: a series of notes . . .

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1

The admonitions to be happy . . . have about them the fury of the father berating his children for not rushing joyously downstairs when he comes home irritable from his office.

Theodore Adorno

The dictionaries of course categorise ‘Happiness’ as an (abstract) noun. In other words, as a state that may obtain under different times or under different circumstances: just like, pain, joy, grief, elation, or any other emotion or bodily state that we endure or enjoy. Well, I do not know, but I have a feeling that there is a fairly widespread notion that happiness is a state of being that it is both desirable and possible to enjoy permanently. If only we could adjust our modes of thinking in some precisely calibrated way, then happiness could almost be categorised as a concrete noun. Because it would be something that you possessed – like a ring on your finger – and carried wherever you went. All this is of course completely fallacious, because – to take but one example – if you have a boss who consistently humiliates and bullies you – it will be utterly impossible to be happy. You will dread going into work, hate being there, sleep badly, in all likelihood brood through the weekend, and very likely become seriously depressed – given that your energy will be sapped and your self–confidence undermined – if not, to all intents and purposes, shot to pieces. To tell someone, under such circumstances, that they need to practice ‘positive thinking’ is little short of cruel. Yet this is precisely the kind of advice you will find in the ‘self help’ books. I have read a few of the latter, and found a handful of truths in some of them. But on the whole they are shallow – if not downright useless or unhealthy – and the bonfire or the trash–can would be the best place for the majority of them.

“It is difficult to get the news from poems,” William Carlos Williams said, “yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.” To “get the news” from the world of psychology is equally difficult. It can take a lifetime. And – through no fault of their own – many cannot even find their way to the first rung of this particular ladder. It would be a great help if society did not pressurise everyone to ‘be happy’, and if people could admit – in appropriate ways – that things often go far from swimmingly with them. As Philip Slater writes, “Life would indeed be less frantic if we were all able to recognise the diversity of responses within ourselves, and could abandon our somewhat futile efforts to present a monolithic face to the world.”(The Pursuit of Loneliness: American Culture at Breaking Point, 1970)

2

It is a diverse world, is it not? Full of people who never fully understand themselves, others, or indeed the existential fact of 'being'! Albert Schweitzer writes, “We are all more oppressed by the riddles of the universe than we allow others to see.” I wonder how far this is the case for the atheist.

3

“A head,-huge, inhuman, and monstrous,-leering in bestial degradation, too foul to be either pictured or described, or to be beheld for more than an instant: yet let it be endured for that instant; for in that head is embodied the type of the evil spirit to which Venice was abandoned in the fourth period of her decline; and it is well that we should see and feel the full horror of it on this spot, and know what pestilence it was that came and breathed upon her beauty, until it melted away like the white cloud from the ancient field of Santa Maria Formosa.”

John Ruskin – The Stones of Venice

Campo Santa Maria Formosa

Non consecutive meditations on blogging / Venice & other matters briefly discussed

God, how tedious it is writing blogs!

So at least I have increasingly found over the last month or so. We’re just back from Venice. Such rich material! But I cannot just post some photos, accompanied by a few banal comments – such as the majority of bloggers seem to put out . . .  at least when they are not telling us how exciting and fulfilled their lives are: oh, keep it to yourself, do!

Sometimes I think that writing is a substitute for living: sometimes. Anyway, I’ve set up my easel, and have canvas, paints, brushes, and white spirit to hand. Materiality is what it’s all about: substance, stuff. And since everything seems to consist of matter – which in itself is infinitely more miraculous than wooden weeping statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary – that has to be alright, does it not?! (That combination of a question mark and an exclamation mark is called an interobang. It’s meant to be restricted to informal writing, but what the hell? I’ve just turned seventy, so I allow myself to do these things now.)

Truth seems to be in as much danger as it was under the Stasi. People lie in public to such an extent that truth’s currency is often fatally undermined. There are many suicides caused by the denials of the rich and powerful. And have you noticed that people in powerful positions who have committed crimes that would put the ordinary Joe behind bars, are said to have “Made mistakes”?

An early Venetian

There is something interesting about our holiday in Venice. I couldn’t sleep one night: not at all. At about four, I tried a whiskey from the fridge: but to no effect. I then tried a liqueur: still no effect.  Finally, I got up, and took to the rainy streets at 6.00. This was a curiously interesting experience as it happened. No tourists about; the houses, campi, etc. looking quite Utrillo–like in the grey morning light; and then the warm light of the interior of a cafe on the Riva degli Schiavoni, already open – in which I had a good cappuccino and the most delicious chocolate croissant (hot) that I’ve ever tasted. For half an hour I got completely lost, and found myself walking along workaday calle, fondamente, etc. – encountering only a few Venetian early workers. This is the Venice that scarcely any tourists ever see (which is to assume that tourists for the most part see much anyway.) 

Early morning walking is a good time for meditation. A sad meditation on that occasion: that there are losses that come out of the blue – like a strike of lightning – unforeseen and irreplaceable. A loss of friendship in this instance, and a reminder to heed Emerson’s advice to take “more wariness in our private estimates.”

The Venetian lagoon: a study in grey

Hinxton headstones: Classical symbolism in Christian design

For decades the only attraction that churchyard gravestones (headstones, grave markers) have had for me has been the rich patterning of lichens and ivies – for which the stone has provided such a perfect home and purchase. And only after my encounter with the remarkable headstones at Stone–in–Oxney and Boughton Monchelsea did I realise that – in certain locations – the symbols and imagery, obscured to greater or lesser degrees by organic encrustations, were rich in historical and anthropological associations.

The headstone illustrated below was one that I came across in the graveyard of the Parish Church of St Mary and St John the Evangelist, Hinxton, south Cambridgeshire. As with the headstone at Stone–in–Oxney, I looked at it completely nonplussed. What was the gravy boat shaped vessel? An oil lamp? Was the ornamental central pot a handle to the lid of the vessel? And what were the curious diagonals behind the vessel? Once again I had to appeal to my friend Adrian Barlow for an explanation: I could not have asked for more, and I print it below the photograph, to give readers a chance to apply their minds to my initial complete puzzlement. Classics scholars should have no problems . . .

[Click on images to enlarge]

The curious diagonals are reversed flaming torches, in Greek and Roman iconography a symbol of death. The bowl is on the one hand a kylix, a Greek drinking vessel used at a symposium, and so symbolically drunk dry at the end of life (hence in Macbeth, “The wine of life is drawn, And the mere lees is left this vault to brag on” 2.iii.94-5). On the other hand it is the golden bowl of Ecclesiastes Ch.12, 6-7: “Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.”

I’m not sure about the jar with the lid at the centre of the design, behind the bowl: it could be a cinerary urn, (An urn for holding a person’s ashes after cremation, especially as used by Classical and prehistoric cultures.) perhaps. Compare the leaf decoration on the lid with the image I attach. I think this is the most likely explanation – especially since, in Greek and Roman practice, the torch was carried in the funeral procession and then used to set light to the pyre.

(Adrian Barlow)

Glass blown cinerary urn, from Pozzuoli
Italy, c. 1st or 2nd century

I think Adrian is certainly right about the small pot being a funerary urn. I had assumed it to be an ornamental handle to a lid on the vessel I could not identify (and I’m sure its separation would have been clear when the stone was fresh from the mason’s yard). It seems that the mason had drawn – part–consciously (and perhaps in large part unconsciously) – from centuries of funerary symbolism: seeing that which was originally polytheistic (or even perhaps pagan) through Christian eyes. If he had the golden bowl of Ecclesiastes in mind, then he has perhaps imagined it as a kylix. Certainly, he would not have had Greek and Roman symposia in mind, devoted – as they so often were – to earthly pleasures. As to the reversed flaming torches, would he have known their origin, or would they have been taken from a pattern–book, and simply used according to the designs developed over time and available to the customer? (The original derivation of the flaming torches was the Classical Olympic Games: the torch signified life when held up, and Thanatos or Death when held down – and how clear are the representations of flames in stone relief when you know what they are!) The following passage – on the symbolism of the urn – makes it clear that masons were often ignorant of the significance of the components of their designs:

In many cases it is obvious that the precise use of the urn was a mystery to the country masons who regarded it as an ossuary, as can be seen in several cases stretching from the fens to Bedfordshire, where angels lift lids from urns with the air of inspecting cooks, to reveal the traditional skull and crossbones within. (Frederick Burgess, English Churchyard Memorials, Lutterworth)  

Solid bronze Attic Greek kylix,  ca. 480 BCE

The handles of the kylix on this headstone do not correspond to any of those on the Greek drinking vessels, all of which have a gentle upward curve: both aesthetically pleasing and functional as controlling the level of the wine when drinking. However, upward inclined handles would not have worked within the space determined by the headstone as a whole (as traditional within the period the mason was working). The combination of straight lines and subtle curves is truly inspired.

The only other headstone that I found particularly interesting – and delightful – is illustrated below. I don’t feel particularly inclined to attempt an analysis of this scene – though perhaps I should. On the one hand it seems to be a straightforward expression of peacefulness: a cherub reclining and relaxing in the rays of the sun – breaking dramatically through the clouds – in Heaven or Arcadia. On the other hand, could it possibly be a representation of the Infant Christ? And what of the lily held in his hand? The lily would appear to be an attribute of the Virgin Mary, and therefore of purity. However, it seems unlikely that such a claim about the life of the deceased would be made. Perhaps the mason plucked the image out of a pattern–book and used it purely for decorative purposes . . .  

Much more straightforward in its symbolism is this headstone from St John the Baptist, Wittersham, Kent. There seems little point in paraphrasing this entry from Signs & Symbols in Christian Art, George Fergusson, Oxford:

Ivy. Symbolically, the ivy has always been closely identified with death and immortality. Because it is forever green, it is a symbol of fidelity and eternal life.

The ivy, which clings to its support, is also a symbol of attachment and undying affection.