The Dialectic Evolution of 'Compartments' and 'Splits' in The Ego and The Personality-Psyche as a Whole


January 1st, 2011

Part 1

(I wrote Part 2 of this essay about a week before Part 1)

Happy New Year everyone...

There are those who believe that it is nonsensical and irrational to 'divide the personality up' into different so-called 'compartments' of which there is no physical, empirical evidence to support the case that any such 'compartments' actually exist.

You can't touch them, you can't see them, in the same way that you can touch a 'physical organ' is the way the 'emprical, behaviorist, anti-compartment' argument goes...and so why do we argue for the existence of something we can neither see nor touch...It is much like the atheist's argument against the existence of God...or the agnostic's 'I don't know' approach to the existence or non-existence of God...How can we ascertain the existence of something that we can neither see nor touch?

I have taken up the 'existence of God' argument before in other essays and likely will tackle it again. I entertain all aspects of the argument -- the religious person's position, the pantheist's position, the agnostic's position, the atheist's position -- and am working towards a 'multi-dialectic-wholistic' position to partly include all positions -- or at least not to completely dismiss those I don't fully invest in, which is probably all of them.

As a rational empiricist, I do not subscribe to the idea of 'faith' -- particularly in today's narcissistic capitalist world where 'money changes everything'.

I am partly an optimist, partly a skeptic, partly a pessimist, partly a cynic -- another 'multi-dialectic wholistic' position that I am working towards aimed at neither getting 'completely stuck inside' nor 'fully investing in' one particular position -- to the absolute exclusion of all others -- understanding that the context of the situation is important, and that in Heraclitus/General Semantics/Gestalt language: 'Everything is subject to change'.
Which brings us back to the present subject matter -- the idea of 'invisible compartments -- and/or ego states -- in the personality'.

The behaviorists are right when they say that we 'infer backwards' --  that we see a person or a group of people engaging in the same type of behavior over and over again -- and then we 'invent' an 'internal or external causal agent' to explain the repetititive behavior. Thus, we invent such concepts as 'characteristic' and 'character' and 'ego' and 'id' and 'superego' and 'ego-state' -- and even 'self' or 'Self' -- David Hume, the ultimate empiricist, actually argued that we have no 'Self' -- that it is just a 'self-invention', a concept without any substance to it other than a pattern of particular behaviors. David Hume was a 'behaviorist' before the term was invented, just as G.W. Hegel was an 'existentialist' -- or at least partly one -- before existentialism was invented.
The behaviorist argues that we look for 'internal causal agents' just like the ancient Greeks (and all other ancient cultures) looked for 'external causal agents' -- and called them 'Gods', or other 'mythological figures'.

Once we got to the earliest Greek (and other cultural) philosophers, the style of thinking, rather than reflecting the 'symbolic style of thinking' of the pre-philosophical Greeks (which in essence was a type of 'mythological' or 'religious philosophy'), started to become more 'rational-empirical' and 'scientific'...more empirically grounded in their thinking, and yet still, 'abstract philosophical assumptions and/or conclusions' were being drawn that we would likely call pretty 'archaic' today. And yet not entirely as there is a level of 'ancient wisdom and intuitive sophistication' that these earliest Greek philosophers were reaching...that still stands the test of time today.
Such is the case when Anaxamander -- academically viewed as the second oldest Greek and Western philosopher (610 BC-546 BC) --  invented the concept of 'The Apeiron'.

Looked at superficially, The Apeiron seems to be a very archaic concept, and is easily dismissed and forgotten in the tombs of time.

However, lately, as in the last few years, Anaxamander is attracting more academic attention and so too is his concept of The Apeiron. Historically, Anaxamander has attracted some spurts of attention, perhaps most notably, Heidegger who in turn influenced Derrida. Derrida can also be viewed as a post-Hegelian, as well as a post-Anaxamanderian. How so?

It is probably no coincidence that Derrida's Deconstruction Philosophy reads like a modern day version of Anaxamander's philosophy of 'multiple competing opposites' breaking loose into the world from 'The Shadows of The Undifferentiated, Chaotic Apeiron, wage war with each other, with the 'loser' returning to the Shadows of The Apeiron to 're-engergize' while the 'winner' basks in the limelight of 'having the power of the world on its side' until the tide reverses, the loser gains enough power to re-enter the world, 'win', and become the focus of attention, with the loser retreating back into the Shadows of the Apeiron to lick its wounds, and regain energy to re-enter the world, fight another day, fight another round with its bi-polar opposite, and if victorious reclaim the power of the worldly attention that it once owned previously.
Such is the 'cycle of power' in Anaxamander's bi-polar, dialectic philosophy which is captured in his famous 'Fragment' which I have included in other earlier essays about Anaxamander.

Whence things have their origin,
Thence also their destruction happens,
According to necessity;
For they give to each other justice and recompense
For their injustice
In conformity with the ordinance of Time.


As I have also stated in earlier essays, amazingly, the Chinese, around the same time or before, were developing a similar 'bi-polar philosophy' captured by the English translations of 'yin' (feminine energy) and 'yang' (masculine energy) which like Heraclitus (535 BC - 475 BC) would argue, after Anaxamander was dead, needed to be both in the world together to balance with each other, and to help movement towards a general overall world balance, world unity, world harmony.
Stated simplisticly,

Anaxamander basically argued that,
Opposites repel and fight with each other for power.
Whereas Heraclitus and The Chinese were arguing that,

Opposites attract each other and need each other in order to better survive and promote 'worldly unified wholism and harmony'.

Using classic Hegelian dialectic logic, 'thesis-anti-thesis-synthesis', or an example of Hegelian logic leading to huge developments in the study of physics, on the subject of 'matter' and 'energy', 'particle theory' (thesis) led to 'wavelength theory' (anti-thesis) which in turn led to 'quantum physics' (synthesis).

Similarly pertaining to the subject of 'bi-polar opposites',

A closer theory of the 'dialectical truth of the matter' -- as in 'matter', 'physics', 'energy', and 'contradictory human motivation' can perhaps be better expressed as...
Opposites both attract and repel each other, co-operate and compete with each other, live harmoniously together at times and fight narcissistically and righteously much more often for individual and/or group special interests...

Now doesn't that sound more like a 'modern marriage'...whether that 'marriage' is built solidly or unsolidly on love, sex, friendship, money, business, economics, politics, religion, philosophy, psychology, science, medicine...you name it...

<b>To differ is human...the always operative question becomes 'How do we handle these differences...constructively or destructively...by impasse or integration...by staying together or breaking apart?<i></i></b>

Integrate Anaxamander's 'bi-polar power philosophy' with Heraclitus' and Lao Tse's 'bi-polar balance (opposites attract and need each other) philosophy, and you have the foundation for modern marriage psychotherapy.

Some philosophical wisdom embraces the test of time -- even 2500 years.   If you take the combination of Anaxamander's dialectic philosophy and Heraclitus' dialectic philosophy, you have the essence of Hegelian dialectic philosophy and logic -- separated by about 2300 years.

I would argue that if you take the combined dialectic philosophy of Anaxamander and Heraclitus, you would have a better foundation of the essence of both Western and Eastern philosophy and evolution theory as a whole, than you would if you took, for example, the combined philosophy of Plato and Aristotle who together provided the foundation for much of modern religious (Plato) and scientific (Aristotle) philosophy. What do I mean by this?

Well, from the combined work of Anaxamander and Heraclitus, as stated above, you get the idea of 'existential dichotomies' such as individuation vs union, co-operation vs. competition, dictatorship vs. democracy, freedom vs. slavery, inclusion vs exclusion, Apollonianism vs. Dionysianism, Christianity vs. the Anti-Christ, Constructionism vs. Deconstructionism, rootedness (the earth) vs. creative transcendence (the sky), fire (yang) vs. water (yin)...

You can get these ideas -- in their most basic form -- from the combined Pre-Socratic philosophy of Anaxamander and Heraclitus -- supplemented by the Eastern philosophy of Lao Tse, Confucious, The Han Philosophers -- and the 2500 year plus dialectic concepts of <b>'yin' and 'yang'. 

<i></i></b>The closest Plato came to the type of ideas that I am trumpeting in Pre-Socratic Dialectic Philosophy and Ancient Chinese Dialectic Philosophy was when he stated that man has basically three main energy sources -- <b>the mind, the heart, and the loins.<i></i></b> 

Personally, I think that was one of the most poignant things that Plato ever wrote, along with the various speeches in The Symposium on the purpose and nature of love, some of these which touched on the 'dialectic nature of love'...

However, as Nietzsche argued in 'The Birth of Tragedy(BT)', after the Pre-Socratics (and ancient Greek Mythology), Western Philosophy became fixated on either 'rational idealism' (Plato, Descartes, Spinoza), religion (The Scholastic Period of Religious Philosophy -- Augustine, Aquinas...) and/or the beginning of science, medicine, and empiricism...for almost 2000 years!

It was only in The 'Romantic Period' of Western philosophy, starting mainly with Rousseau around 1750, and moving on to Goethe, Schelling, and the rest of The English and German Romantics that, philosophically speaking, man's passions were 're-awakened'...

Most of the philosphical work in the preceding 2000 years leading up to the Romantic Period, between Socrates and Rousseau, was mainly focused on 'restraining' and 'putting a lid on' man's 'irrational passions'... How many millions have tried and failed?

As Nietzsche distinguished in BT, man is essentially a 'house divided' -- and torn apart, often in resulting tragedy -- between his 'Dionysian' (sensual, hedonistic, narcissistic) impulses and his more rational Apollonian 'self and social restraints'.

At least that was until Nietzsche abandoned 'Apollo' all together and rode his Dionsysian Horse for the rest of philosophical life. So much for the idea of 'equilibrium or homeostatic (dialectic) balance and between two equally viable internal forces in the personality as Freud would come to articulate in Psychoanalysis in 1923 as being between the 'superego' and the 'id' with the 'ego' trying successfully or unsuccessfully to 'negotiate' their primal vs. civil differences. Likewise with Jung, when Jung came to articulate the potential internal separation in man between his 'Social Personna' and his more covert, secretive, primal 'Shadow'... It was perhaps Pierre Janet, even before both Freud and Jung, who was the first to articulate the idea of 'dissociated states' or 'splits' in the ego or psyche...Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde, anyone?

Both Object Relations (a division of Psychoanalysis) and Transactional Analysis would continue with this line of thinking, as would almost every other school of psychology and psychotherapy, with a few exceptions such as Adlerian Psychology, perhaps Cognitve Therapy that doesn't really go into much 'Personality Theory' but which distinguishes between 'rational' and 'irrational' beliefs...and Behaviorism that tries to stay out of man's head as much as it can altogether...

Thus, the 'dialectic philosphers' influenced and/or became 'dialectic psychologists' -- articulating different proposed 'splits' and/or 'compartments' in the personality, each with different 'functions' and 'goals'.
....................................................................................

Part 2

We all like something we can 'visualize' while we are learning...even if it is 'just a model or map or theory' that we should not necessarily take too seriously, too narcissistically, too personally...to the point where we can only think within our own 'self-created set of boxes' and not entertain other possible approaches, models, theories, and/or sets of 'compartments'...

Flexibility, tolerance of differences, and an openess to hearing or seeing other approaches is just as important in the realm of personality theory as it is in say...the realm of religion...
When this doesn't happen and you have an 'egotistic clash of titans' -- theorists at the top of their profession -- then you invariably are likely to have 'splits' -- not only in the personality, but ironically, between different personality theorists...

Instead of entertaining the possibility of an element of 'separation and inclusionism' at the same time -- such as might be differentiated and also associated in the names 'Freudian Psychoanalysis' vs. 'Adlerian Psychoanalysis' vs. 'Jungian' Psychoanalysis' -- in that all three of the partly similar, partly different personality theories originated out of the same 'father' -- Freud -- rather, you get this 'narcissistic tug of war' within the context of an 'Aristotlean two-valued, bi-polar, never the two should touch and meet' type of thinking style -- an 'either/or' type of thinking -- that basically precludes and elminates the possibility of a different type of 'post-Hegelian, post Korzybskian, multi-dialectic-multi-valued-integrative thinking' where different philosophers and psychologists perhaps come back together, figuratively or metaphorically, under less stressfuly, egotistic (narcissistic) circumstances -- or their respective students do, perhaps many years later when the main creators and protagonists relative to the different personality theories and psychotherapies are dead, and therefore can no longer lift their respective egotistic heads...to say 'boo'...

It is this latter attitude of 'multi-dialectic, multi-valued integration' spear-headed by yours truly, that is the driving force and the essence of Hegel's Hotel...

Where protagonists and narcissitic rivals lay dead and buried, yours truly, DGB, comes in to tell everybody over their respective grave stones to 'rest in peace' -- or at least rest in peace with their own cherished 'psychological pieces of the more wholistic psychological puzzle' -- and in their aftermath, I look to re-arrange some of those different 'pieces' from different 'conflicting protagonists' and actually put them back together again -- like Humpty Dumpty -- only wholisticially different, valuing the idea of integrating good ideas from different theories and theorists...

I am not saying that this is a perfect idea or that it always works perfectly to everyone's egotistic satisfaction -- this has never happened in the history of man, and most certainly never will...

When you have so called 'perfect agreement' between different people in a group, that is probably a good time to start looking for things like 'collusion', 'internal intimidation', 'bribery', 'black mail', 'an underlying reading of the riot act', etc..

Perfect agreement between different people is more likely to be an expression of a 'social persona' -- 'See, look how united we are!' -- rather than any expression of an 'underlying group Shadow' -- although this can happen to in certain social group phenomena, where everyone loses their reason and goes into some 'primal mode of thinking and/or feeling', perhaps, if sufficiently pathological, launching into a group killing spree, such as in different acts of genecide, and/or ideological terrorism: egs., 'The Spanish Inquisition', 'The French Reign of Terror', 'Nazi, Germany, The Holocaust, and World War 11', 'Darfur'....and so on...Charles Manson...

Anyway, it is on the note and project-goal of a 'massive philosophical and psychological integration over the whole of Western history and culture' that inspired the birth of Hegel's Hotel and that takes us on a long historical trip backwards into time, and then back to the present again: back to Greek Mythology, through Ancient Greek Philosophy, some Ancient Asian Philosophy (primarily Lao Tse and the birth of Daoism), through Roman Philosophy and the beginning of Roman Religious Philosophy, through the birth and beginning of Modern Science, Rationalism, Empiricism, Rational-Empiricism, The Enlightenment, Romanticism, German Idealism, the birth of Humanism, Existentialism, and Humanistic-Existentialism, Post-Modernism and Deconstructionism (Nietzsche to Derrida), Power Philosophy (Foucault), Structuralism and anti-Structuralism, and the birth of Modern Clinical Psychology from Mesmer and the birth of Hypnotism, Charcot, Breuer, Janet, and Freud to Wilhelm and Theodor Reich, Steckel, Karl Abraham, Ferenczi, Jones, Adler, Jung, all the post and neo-Freudians (Adler, Fromm, Horney...), Object Relations (Melanie Klein, Fairbairn, Winnicott, Guntrip...), Self Psychology (Kohut...) Transactional Analysis (Berne), Cognitive Therapy, General Semantics, and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (Korzybski and his classic book 'Science and Sanity', S.I., Hayakawa and his main book, 'Language in Thought and Action', Aaron Beck, Albert Ellis, George Kelly, Maxwell Maltz and his best-seller, 'Psycho-Cybernetics', Nathaniel Branden and his main book, 'The Psychology of Self-Esteem', right up to my sponsoring professor for my Honours Thesis at the University of Waterloo -- Donald Meichenbalm, and his first main book, 'Cogntive-Behavior Therapy...), the birth of Gestalt Psychology and then Gestalt Therapy in the 1940s and 50s (Perls, Goodman, and Hefferline)...and other important Humanistic Psychologists around this same time period, most notably, Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow, and the Humanistic-Existentialists such as Victor Frankl and Rollo May...And let me not forget -- even though I have largely been at philosophical and psychological odds with them over my intellectual history -- Pavlov, B.F. Skinner, and the rest of the Behaviorist Psychologists...And the controversial Psychoanalytic Scandal prompted by Jeffrey Masson in the 1980s around Freud's still controversial post-1896 'abandoment' of his pre-1897 'traumacy-seduction' theory in favor of his later evolving 'childhood sexuality, screen memory, fantasy, and Oedipal Theories'...


In Hegel's Hotel, I have tried to the best of my ability to embrace the individual and collective spirit of all these different philosophers and psychologists over the history of Western and Eastern Philosophy, and Western Clinical Psychology...


And bring them all together under one metaphorical roof, in one metaphorical hotel -- 'Hegel's Hotel'.

Furthermore, the main philosophical-psychological project within Hegel's Hotel is the new formation of a massive, integrative 're-building' of 'Psychoanalysis' -- with all these different people mentioned above playing bigger and lesser roles in the creation of the final project: what I am calling in long form, 'DGB (Multi-Dialectic, Multi-Bi-Polar) Quantum Integrative Humanistic-Existential Psychoanalysis'...
Wow! That was a mouthful!!

This is an extension of my earlier project in the 1980s which I called 'GAP Psychology' -- comprised mainly of Gestalt Therapy, Adlerian Psychology, and Psychoanalysis, until Transactional Analysis and Jungian Psychology were later added into the mix...and then different elements of the whole of Western Psychology and Philosophy...stemming right back to Greek Mythology and then the second oldest Western Philosopher -- Anaxamander -- as well as one of the earliest known Chinese Philosophers -- Lao Tse... 

Lao Tse, to my way of dialectic thinking, was basically the Eastern equivalent of Anaxamander and Heraclitus back in Greece around the same time... The birth of 'Dialectic Philosophy' -- the philosophy of engaging opposites -- was taking place in both Greece and China at roughly the same time...Coincidence? An unknown communicative connection? Or just a similar style of Western and Eastern dialectic thinking developing across the world from each other in about the same ancient time period...

I begin my story of the birth of Quantum Psychoanalysis with the 'multi-dialectic philosophy' of Anaxamander, the second oldest Greek Philosopher...

Anaxamander's most important concept was his concept of 'The Apeiron'...which could or can be construed as being similar to our present day concept of 'The Universe', and/or 'Chaos'...or 'The Universal Shadows'...with one very important 'dialectical addition' to our present concepts...With Anaxamander, the Apeiron can be viewed as an 'exploding Universe of undifferentiated opposites that spring from the Chaotic Shadows of Life'...

Now some 2560 years later, I am about to do something that, to my knowledge, no psychologist or philosopher has done before me... It starts with the principle of 're-owning projections'...

It is a psychological generalization and at least partial truism, that philosphers and psychologists -- just like the rest of us -- tend to 'invent' concepts, beliefs, values, structures, myths, Gods, 'external realities'...that are either a 'mistaken' and/or an additional reflection of our own 'internal realities'...

Most psychologists are familiar with -- athough the rest of us may not be -- the idea that we all tend to 'project our introjections' and 'introject our projections'; these are two mainly unconsious or subconscious cognitive processes going on constantly within the minds of men and women, both individually and collectively such as in the forms of 'Gods' and 'myths' and 'heroes' and 'demons'...

And so, in going back to the ancient dialectic philosophy of Anaxmander, I say to myself: Let us imagine Anaxamander's concept of 'The Apeiron' as an 'internal human psychological reality' as well as a 'universal external evolutionary reality'....and then ask ourselves: 'Where does this take us to?'

It brings us to 'Concept 1' -- if we are starting from the bottom of the unconcious psyche and working upwards towards the conscious psyche -- and that is the concept of 'The Apeiron': an infinite world of undifferentiated, exploding and then separating opposites at the very bottom of our unconscious psyche...'Functional multi-dialectic evolution' -- in the same spirit as the rest of the universe -- has stqrted its mighty process at the bottom, and the birthplace, of the human psyche...

Concept 2: 'The Genetic Self or Self-God':  Once again, we need to 're-own or introject (internalize) our projections'....In this case, one of man's most famous and most common projections is 'God'...our speculated Creator, and Creator of The Universe...The main Greek God was 'Zeus', the main Roman God was 'Jupitor', and upon the birth of Christianity, 'Zeus' and 'Jupitor' basically got condensed into simply -- 'God'.

I have no trouble with anyone calling our 'Genetic Self or Self-God' the work of Zeus, Jupitor, and/or God...Metaphorically, religously, spiritually, mythologically, pantheistically...whatever word you wish to describe this process, our Self and Self-God is in essence our Spirit, our Soul, our connection to the creative work of God....within us...our own personal God if you will...and we better pay attention to our 'Self-God' if we wish to live a happy, healthy life, because the more we become 'estranged' from our Self-God, a stranger to our Self-God, the more we are going to alienate ourselves from ourselves, and in so doing, bow to the world -- and ourselves -- in worldly and self defeat...

This idea above is very akin to Jung's mythological work in the area of 'The Self'...Jung was probably my last major influence in the development of my model of the personality that I am putting forward here. However, I at least partly reject Jung's concept of 'The Collective Unconcious' in favor of my own preferred concept of 'The Self and Self-God' as articulated here.

This differerence may be construed as 'negligible' or it may be construed as 'significant' -- I think it is partly both: our Genetic Self is partly a very individual and partly a 'genetic, family' concept that traces the presence of most of our main, innate self-skills and talents along genetic (DNA) lines...that obviously if you go right back to beginning of man will eventually include the whole 'family or collectivity of man' stemming back and forth in its 'genetic-historical-cultural-mythological-symbolic transference process'...

From here, we start to move into the 'dividing and differentiating of the God and Archetype Symbols' within the personality stemming from 'The Undifferentiated Chaos of the Internal Apeiron' and eventually ending up as different and often opposing 'ego-states and ego-state functions' within the realm of the personality....
Some of these 'Differentiated and Opposing Archetype Forces and/or Auxilliary Ego States' that I will develop can be differentiated as:

1. The Light vs. Dark (Apollonian vs. Narcissistic) Forces Man;
2. The Narcissistic vs. Altruistic Forces in Man;
3. The Masculine ('yang') vs. Feminine ('yin') Force in Man;
4. The Apollonian vs. Dionysian Force in Man;
5. The Enlightenment-Apollonian vs. Romantic-Aphroditian (Venus, Cupid) Force in Man;
6. The Nurturing Feminine (Gaia, Hera) vs. Righteous, Critical (Apollonian) Force in Man;
7.  The Righteous, Constructive (Apollonian) vs. The Rebellious, Deconstructive (Counter-Apollonian) Force in Man;
8. The Dominant (Authoritarian, Sadistic) vs. Rebellious, Righteous Apollonian Force in Man;
9. The Co-operative vs. Rebellious Forces in Man;
10. The 'Inclusive' vs. 'Exclusive' Forces in Man

We will get to these on another day as we move our way up through the 'unconscious personality' and into the domain of 'The Central Ego' and its various 'Partisan, Auxillary Ego-States' (metaphorically speaking, 'Parliament' in The Personality)...
Suffice is to say for now that our 'Central Ego' needs to be fully dialectically engaged and a 'successful negotiator' with all of these internal partisan factions in our personality...i.e., including our 'Genetic Self-(God)' and all our main bi-polar functional and dysfunctional partisan factions and their various derrivatives into 'ego states'...

This is before and during the time that our Central Ego also has to deal with the stimuli, stressors, antagonistic and nurturing forces in our external environment...

When things go wrong, modern day psychologists and psychiatrists often call this 'bi-polar disorder' which is fine to a point but too abstract when we could be talking about any of 10 or more different types of 'bi-polar disorder'. And not all of them -- perhaps not even <b>any<i></i></b> of them -- require drugs, although it is so easy to look for that 'magic bullet' that will 'just make us feel better' without any internal or external work involved.

Neurosis and psychopathology essentially requires the work of a better 'integrating Central Ego' -- which is on our own shoulders, within our own mind, and a therapist who best knows how to help a person get to this point of better integration.

The 'multi-bi-polar model', by the way, is just as relevant and applicable to physical medical disorders as well as 'psychological disorders'. High and low blood pressure, high and low blood sugar, hypo-thyroidism and hyper-thyroidism, nutritional excesses and nutritional deficiencies, too low and too high immune system function...all of these physical disorders work on a 'bi-polar model' -- too much or too little of a good thing usually becomes a bad thing -- in the same way that we are applying the same bi-polar model idea here to psychological health and illness (dysfunction, disorder, ailment, pathology, neurosis, psychosis...)

Extreme thoughts, feelings, and behaviors can usually be associated with psychological dysfunction, depending partly on the context and context of the 'extremism', and even more so, if it reflects a chronic state of existence...

The Hegelian dialectic formula of, 1. thesis; 2. anti-or-counter-thesis; 3. synthesis reflects this 'bi-polar model' as does W.B. Cannon's famous medical principle of 'homeostatic (or in philosophical terms, dialectic) balance'.
All of the psychological models listed above, also reflect the principle of homeostatic balance as its 'guiding, idealistic health principle'.  So does Maxwell Maltz's guiding principle in his 1960s best-seller, 'Psycho-Cybernetics'. We steer too far to the left, and we generally, or ideally, have a cognitive feedback mechanism by which to bring us back to the right; and visa versa if we steer too far to the right.


We are all looking, in one way or another, for that 'Ideal Place of Homeostatic/Dialectic Balance' -- also called 'Equillibrium'.
Gestalt Therapy calls it 'Organismic Self-Regulation'. No, I didn't write 'Orgasmic Self-Regulation' although even that is a more specific part of the whole overall process. (Read Wilhelm Reich if you are interested in that line of thought)

Our time is likely to be very fleeting indeed at that very special 'Central Spot of Healthy, Happy Equillibrium' that we are all looking for -- and this 'Sweet Homeostatic Balance Spot' is partly different for every separate individual which complicates things immensely -- but regardless, it is generally only for a very brief time, if any time at all, that we hit this Sweet Spot' -- like a hitter who hits the baseball on the 'Sweet Spot' of the bat -- before something either in our inside and/or outside world 'sets us off' again, and then we are no longer in 'Homeostatic Balance' anymore, and we are looking for a way -- through problem solving and/or conflict-resolving -- to get us back there -- to Internal Utopia -- again.

It is like 'The Myth of The Golden Fleece' -- or a 'Gold or God Rush'....We all have our own indivdiual, partly similar, partly different version of this myth...chasing our 'Magic Bullet' or 'Magic Pill'...

Adler, in more secular, less mythological and symbolic, terms, called this our 'lifestyle goal'....or an often 'obsessive-compulsive'  desired line of movement -- and resulting 'chase' -- from a certain type of individualized 'Inferiority Feeling (IF)' to a certain type of individualized 'superiority striving (SS)'.

I call this same process a combination of our 'Traumacy-Transference Memory (TTM)' which crystalizes into our more generalized 'inferiority feeling' before we creatively compensated for this inferiority or insecurity feeling by chasing our 'Transference Mastery Compulsion (TMC)'...with our TMC functioning as our obsessive-compulsive transference-lifestyle goal of 'denying', 'minimizing', overcoming, defeating, and/or mastering our leftover Inferiority Feeling (IF) from our Traumacy-Transference Memory (TTM).

Did you follow all that?  If you didn't, and you are intrigued, you are going to have to read a combination of past and future essays right here in Hegel's Hotel.
A 'myth' does not have to be false. It can be true, false, or anywhere in between. More appropriately here, a myth can be defined as a 'symbolic ideal'.

My myth that I am chasing...or at least my main one...is 'Hegel's Hotel'...
When Hegel's Hotel is perfect...then, and only then, will I be perfect...or at least as close to perfect philosophically as I will ever get in this lifetime....or so my 'transference-lifestyle' thinking in this area goes...

When I write what I think is a good philosophical-psychological essay, for a few moments afterward, I am as close to 'homeostatic balance' as I can get...at least in this area...but the moment I step up from my computer, other 'life imbalances' take over my focus of attention, which quite frankly, I am much less 'geared' to properly solving...or so it seems to be the case at this time...

We all have our different areas of strength and weakness....what I call 'transference lifestyle strengths and weaknesses'...if it is connected to childhood past memories, experiences, and their derrivative 'mastery compensations'...
Every idea, every characteristic carries within it the seeds to its own self-destruction, if or whenpushed too far. This is one of the most important ideas that Hegel ever wrote.

Again, the principle of 'homeostatic/dialectic balance'. 
We all chase different forms of 'extremism' and 'perfection' at different points in time in our life, but generally, there is a counter-urge -- and propulsion -- to come back to centre field. Not always. But generally.

'DGB Quantum Psychoanalysis is a derrivative or a subset of Hegel's Hotel...Quantum Psychoanalysis is my internalized, introjected, 'intra-psychic' version of Hegel's Hotel (and alternatively, Hegel's Hotel is my external philosophical projection of Quantum Psychoanalysis).

My Quantum Psychoanalysis model is an extrapolation of Freud's triadic 'ego-id-superego' model but probably closer in actual proximity to Jung's 'Self, Archetype, Shadow, and Persona' model...with a partial Object Relations ('ego-splitting') and Transactional Analysis ('ego-state') influence as well.

Overly complicated models can be dysfunctional, particularly if people cannot understand and/or use them properly, and/or a lot of attention is drawn to things or processes that just may not be important enough to warrant their inclusion in the model.

However, overly simplistic models can also have their drawbacks, their limitations...
This is the case with Aristotle's 'either/or', 'black or white' model of logic:
If 'A' has properties that are different than 'B' and 'B' has properties that are different than 'A', then 'A' cannot be 'B' and 'B' cannot be 'A'....That works fine until 'A' and 'B' according to evolutionary life processes decide to 'copulate' or 'mutate' or 'integrate' in which case, you now have both 'A' and 'B' as well as neither 'A' nor 'B'; rather you have a 'new evolutionary entity' that we can rightly call 'AB'.

The simplist dialectic model of the personality is probably Perls' 'topdog-underdog' Gestalt model...or alternatively his 'I and Thou, Here and Now' model. Either version of this Gestalt model -- the former a more 'authoritarian' model; the latter a more 'democratic' model -- can be expanded in a wide variety of ways to include almost any and every possible 'dialectic derrivative' of the 'topdog-underdog' or 'I and Thou' generic template...

In other words, one of the two models can be 'customized' to suit practically any and every individual's particular therapeutic/self-actualization needs...
However, the DGB Quantum Psychoanalysis model, as complicated as it may be, at least until it is learned properly, allows us to explore various different types of psychological phenomena and dynamics in a partly different type of intimate detail that won't be captured by other schools of clinical psychology.

Elements of Freudian Psychoanalysis, Object Relations, Adlerian Psychology, Jungian Psychology, Transactional Analysis, Gestalt Therapy, Existential Analysis, Cognitive Therapy, and Self-Esteem Psychology are all there....and put together in one package that extrapolates on each and everyone of the schools of psychology mentioned above in a way that is -- on a 'wholistic' level -- distinctly different than each of the schools of psychology taken individually.
We have a lot of work ahead of us, as does our Central Ego every waking and working day...

I have written more than enough in this essay.

-- dgb, Dec. 25th-26th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectical Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...