Psychoanalyzed

Here is a response to my psychologist friend after a long conversation last night. I will add more to this when I am not so tired.

____________________

Thought: I am sarcastic and speak in hyperbole too much. Didn't pick up on a few of your comments

example

i am too realistic to delude myself

9:45 PM i guess i won't be happy

9:46 PM u are quite critical; which u seem to know about urself

  'i guess i'll never b happy' is a strong statement

I was actually talking about the following passage:

 "Surprisingly, however, Murray and colleagues (2011) found that couples who idealized each other displayed much longer lasting levels of marital satisfaction than those who held more realistic views. This effect held constant even after statistically controlling for the partner's level of neuroticism, agreeableness, depression, and a host of other attributes. In other words, it didn't matter how good or bad a participant's partner actually was, it only mattered whether or not a participant believed their partner was great."

When I said "I'll never be happy" I was saying that I am too logical for passion (from idealization), and that means my relationships will likely not be as "happy" (at least according to the data). I also think this means that if it is less happy, I will likely want to move on to better relationships. 

Now that I reflect on it, the "soul mate" concept so popularly touted by everyone, although a likely delusion, probably ends up helping people to have better marriages (and this was a good thing since this was the only socially acceptable option until very recently).

Overall, I actually do think I will be happy in a lasting way (though my view of happiness is simply contentment and an end to my restlessness). If I didn't truly think it was possible, I wouldn't keep on going, I'd turn suicidal. I am an optimist at heart, and at a minimum I fortunately see too many good possibilities in my life to make such a final decision. It's why I don't walk away from relationships even once they turn sour. That is probably the key to why I go crazy at the end of relationships (when partners begin to stop emotional vulnerability). I actually see too many possibilities and am overwhelmed and don't know what to do.  

By the same token, I am also afraid to make almost any permanent decisions in life. Tattoos, student loans, careers (in the conventional sense) and yes marriage (in the death do us part sense). Because of social pressures I felt my choices were only get married or don't seek out relationships. For a long time I avoiding dating, and this aversion to "forever" was my secret fear. Fortunately, I realized it's perfectly reasonable to make commitments of varying lengths and see how they go and reevaluate later. Given how many things can change between two people in a lifetime, I can't honestly promise forever. I think my big fear was dating someone, caring about them, but then hurting them later if we grew apart and they wanted to stay married when I didn't.  Since I realized that isn't the only option (just like being heterosexual isn't for some people) I was able to  "come out of the closet" regarding my views on the non-permanence of relationships. It's very liberating. Now I am able to just tell women I am interested in commitment (which is true), but it will be gradual and we can increase the length over time (think of it is as a lease with an option to renew/buy).

We talked about how I go from critical to hyper-critical once I move past the casual stage and officially label the relationship. You asked me what this "freak out" might mean. I think it has a lot to do with permanence. Lately I have been much better about this process given I don't have the old pressures about marriage, but I hadn't considered how much the notion of children was back in my head. In a lot of ways it's even more of a burden than  marriage. The problem is I really do want children, but the thought scares the hell out of me. I also know I will only have, at most, a few children and I want their mother to be (please understand what I mean here) a "good egg donor" too. I guess it lies in the fact that I want my children to have the best head start possible (though I guess alternately it could be seen as perfection and if I except that I would probably be the cruelest father ever - or at least make the kid feel really inferior and then try really hard to be perfect and end up like me [and probably hate me] or just feel like he/she wasn't). I guess this means I just have to accept people like they are and love them for that. 

I will say though it's a very difficult intersection when I think I have to look for a mother, a lover, a friend, an intellectual match, a companion, and someone who can put up with my shit and lack of stability all in the same person. I wish it was more socially acceptable to have these needs met by multiple people as it would be much easier and greatly reduce my anxiety about "making a good decision."  

Along the same lines I have made a similar decision to eschew a career in favor of a series of interesting short term jobs. I am ok with being a teacher since I am freely admitting I might leave. If I had to feign to myself permanent interest in the occupation I wouldn't be so eager to try. 

I'll write more on this later, but it's a good stab. 

I still need to talk about trust I think, was there anything else you mentioned or hinted at? You don't have to be so delicate with me.  You can be blunt. I am oblivious sometimes because I am so focused on what I am thinking.

Anger doesn't hide the hurt

Love

Just a few things to think about:

• Society's preoccupation with "passionate love"
• Accepting my lack of passion (I don't generally have emotions that are that intense)
• More focus on commitment (I never thought I would be the one wanting stability, but I want someone I can rely on). It is something I expected passion to take care of in the past. 
• Looking for people who can truly be emotionally intimate (this is the most important aspect for me)
• People who can trust and that I can trust

Freud, Anxiety and the Ego

Just did some reading on Freud and all of the associated disorders. Not sure why he got such a bad reputation. Yes,  some things seem like a stretch: penis envy, anal retention, oral fixation. But his theory of the id, superego and ego and how they lead to anxiety 



It fits nicely with what I was reading about in the Tantra book. The conflict between the three is referred to as the "inherently duslistic mind." < This perpetual state of confusion/internal conflict doesn't seem very surprising when considered from this perspective.

The id, the ego, and the superego

Freudian psychological reality begins with the world, full of objects. Among them is a very special object, the organism. The organism is special in that it acts to survive and reproduce, and it is guided toward those ends by its needs -- hunger, thirst, the avoidance of pain, and sex.

A part -- a very important part -- of the organism is the nervous system, which has as one of its characteristics a sensitivity to the organism's needs. At birth, that nervous system is little more than that of any other animal, an "it" or id. The nervous system, as id, translates the organism's needs into motivational forces called, in German,Triebe, which has been translated as instincts or drives. Freud also called themwishes. This translation from need to wish is called the primary process.

The id works in keeping with the pleasure principle, which can be understood as a demand to take care of needs immediately. Just picture the hungry infant, screaming itself blue. It doesn't "know" what it wants in any adult sense; it just knows that it wants it and it wants it now. The infant, in the Freudian view, is pure, or nearly pure id. And the id is nothing if not the psychic representative of biology.

Unfortunately, although a wish for food, such as the image of a juicy steak, might be enough to satisfy the id, it isn't enough to satisfy the organism. The need only gets stronger, and the wishes just keep coming. You may have noticed that, when you haven't satisfied some need, such as the need for food, it begins to demand more and more of your attention, until there comes a point where you can't think of anything else. This is the wish or drive breaking into consciousness.

Luckily for the organism, there is that small portion of the mind we discussed before, the conscious, that is hooked up to the world through the senses. Around this little bit of consciousness, during the first year of a child's life, some of the "it" becomes "I," some of the id becomes ego. The ego relates the organism to reality by means of its consciousness, and it searches for objects to satisfy the wishes that id creates to represent the organisms needs. This problem-solving activity is called the secondary process.

The ego, unlike the id, functions according to the reality principle, which says "take care of a need as soon as an appropriate object is found." It represents reality and, to a considerable extent, reason.

However, as the ego struggles to keep the id (and, ultimately, the organism) happy, it meets with obstacles in the world. It occasionally meets with objects that actually assist it in attaining its goals. And it keeps a record of these obstacles and aides. In particular, it keeps track of the rewards and punishments meted out by two of the most influential objects in the world of the child -- mom and dad. This record of things to avoid and strategies to take becomes the superego. It is not completed until about seven years of age. In some people, it never is completed.

There are two aspects to the superego: One is the conscience, which is an internalization of punishments and warnings. The other is called the ego ideal. It derives from rewards and positive models presented to the child. The conscience and ego ideal communicate their requirements to the ego with feelings like pride, shame, and guilt.

It is as if we acquired, in childhood, a new set of needs and accompanying wishes, this time of social rather than biological origins. Unfortunately, these new wishes can easily conflict with the ones from the id. You see, the superego represents society, and society often wants nothing better than to have you never satisfy your needs at all!

Freud saw all human behavior as motivated by the drives or instincts, which in turn are the neurological representations of physical needs. At first, he referred to them as the life instincts. These instincts perpetuate (a) the life of the individual, by motivating him or her to seek food and water and avoid pain, and (b) the life of the species, by motivating him or her to have sex. The motivational energy of these life instincts, the "oomph" that powers our psyches, he called libido, from the Latin word for "I desire."

Freud's clinical experience led him to view sex as much more important in the dynamics of the psyche than other needs. We are, after all, social creatures, and sex is the most social of needs. Plus, we have to remember that Freud included much more than intercourse in the term sex! Any desire to touch or be touched was included. Anyway, libido has come to mean, not any old drive, but the sex drive.

Freud once said "life is not easy!"

The ego - the "I" - sits at the center of some pretty powerful forces: society, as represented by the superego; biology, as represented by the id; and reality. When these make conflicting demands upon the poor ego, it is understandable if the ego feels threatened, feels overwhelmed, feels as if it were about to collapse under the weight of it all. This feeling is called anxiety, and it serves as a signal to the ego that its survival, and with it the survival of the whole organism, is in jeopardy.

The ego deals with the demands of reality, the id, and the superego as best as it can. But when the anxiety becomes overwhelming, the ego must defend itself. It does so by unconsciously blocking the impulses or distorting them into a more acceptable, less threatening form. The techniques the ego uses are called the ego defense mechanisms.

I have already talked aboutthis to some degree, but I have also realized that this "chatter" isn't always productive. Sometimes it is the equivalent of a nagging housewife. My thoughts wear me down sometimes. They also keep
me from following a line if thought for more than a few moments. If I let these tendencies go unchecked there will be little hope of clarity.

I have been reading a book on Buddhist Tantra the past two days and it has been very helpful in pointing out this tendency. It has also pointed out how much suffering we bring on ourselves from the mere appearances of our mind. How we allow ourselves to be stressed out about uncomfortable situations we are not in (but might happen in the future) or how we imagine how a significant other is off doing something when we don't know if it is actually occurring or not or how we might be financially ruined if this or that happens (but are sitting in a nice home with a full stomach). Once I considered how silly it is to stress about something that isn't happening, much of the stress we put on ourselves melts away.

Also, along those lines is Meditation. It's simply the process of slowing down these cycles of bad thought so we can enter a state of peace. I used to think the point was to stop all thinking, but simply slowing down the nonsense and following the lines of thought we want is in itself an almost equal benefit - clarity.

My time at Bridgewater was very valuable. It helped me to chase after
conflict and separate emotion from my problems. I made a lot of
personal
progress because of this. Unfortunately, the world is not so eager to
face such things head on. A lot of people avoid these things at all
cost. In a lot of ways, it has led to the failure of more than one
friendship. I almost feel like it has left me with a way that keeps me
from sharing my love with the world. Conflict and criticism is how I
help people. I really enjoy the process of working through a problem
and helping people work towards the things that they want and the
things that will improve the quality of their lives. I love doing this
in my own life. Researching, reading, talking with friends and then
putting it in to practice and monitoring the results. I guess this has
highlighted for me the need to improve my delivery so that my genuine
concern can come through. I am going to have to work on sharing these
things in a way that's more acceptable and less hurtful.

I'm sad. I feel like a battered wife sometimes. I always come back

I can certainly relate

Every moment is a T moment....

Juxtaposition... it's always enlightening

Questions I meant to ask myself....

A new friend on Facebook asked me a question I have wanted to answer for myself the past week:

You probably already told me this, but what are you in school for?


my reply (with a few additions to flesh out the areas where I needed to be honest with myself):


The short answer is to get my masters in teaching with an emphasis in biology (coursework is split between the two departments).... the longer answer is that I did finance and economics in undergrad and worked for a hedge fund... I have taken the last two+ years off and still have no clue what I want to do next (mainly because any job I take would be a huge step backwards (in terms of both content and to some degree pay and certainly in terms of work environment from where I was before). Additionally, given how little there is left that I want to learn in the field, I am not interested in working years to get to the point where I was already at.

Over the years different friends have suggested that I consider being a teacher. A few months ago I finally went to the college of education to see what opportunities might be available. I ended up getting a scholarship that covers almost all of tuition so I decided to go through with it. I still have no convincing answer for myself when I ask the question "what do you want to be when you grow up?" (I'm only about 60% certain I will even teach at all, and ironically the biggest reason would be for student loan forgiveness - I plan on taking out loans in grad school so I don't have to work while I am in college. I do think the jobs makes a lot of "sense" for me and the lifestyle I want for myself, I am just not particularly excited about it (though don't take this to mean that I am am not partially interested).

The overarching reason however that I am going back is that it is a low-cost, socially-acceptable way of not going back to work (I don't care about money, I just don't want to ostracize myself by appearing to be a total bum). I have plenty of big ideas I want to realize in my lifetimes, I am just waiting for the right conditions to come along so I can pounce on it - in time this may in fact be an opportunity for me to do some of those big things. Mainly because it will afford me the means (time and money) to do what I want. I would not have these if I was working a normal workweek with standard vacation time.

In short, I have given up almost entirely on the idea of a career which seems to be the one thing so many people in our generation seek. I really want my life to be a series of interesting jobs (each several years in length) that lead towards my longer term goals of being involved in some form of local government, potentially a writer/photographer, and a Unitarian Universalist minister (or at least a role where I am dealing with thoughtful, interesting people and I am able to share the things I have learned over the years and to be regularly challenged to define for myself the areas where I and our society at large can experience the most growth).

Towards this end, the biggest challenge (or at least source of worry for me) will be my financial security. Growing up with a depression era grandfather next door and in a rural area that was drenched in poverty, it is something that has always been a source of anxiety. Ironically, I get more comfort from finding ways of being frugal than I do of actually earning income. My goal is to be able to survive off of pennies rather than being rich. I also like this way of life because it is something I can share with others, when the path to riches is not something that is universally available. This spendthrift mentality does however pose certain social obstacles when confronted with a society based on materialism. Thankfully, the recession/looming depression has changed social attitudes. Now that I am thinking about it more clearly, it's essentially that the way of life I was raised in is now coming into vogue as economic conditions have deteriorated.

In any case, I am going to enjoy the coming school year and reevaluate my options depending on what happens (mainly the availability of scholarships - funding for the grant that approved my scholarship may not be renewed since it comes from the National Science foundation and would be subject to federal budget cuts).