In
the third part of this series of articles detailing the sources and archetypal
reflections of conscience/super-ego, I am left with a daunting disconnect
between the elevated conscious perception of our moral facility, and its
unconscious aspect. Indeed, I was so
very surprised to discover the source and dynamic implications of my own
conscience, that I wrote the following in my book, The Tangible Self:
"Although
castration is big in psychology, it seems absurd to the ordinary healthy
person. I never thought about it. A non-topic.
Perhaps once a decade there would be talk of gelding a bull and the word
would come up. No one ever spends even a
single moment concerned with the idea.
It seems nothing short of asinine to make so much of it as they do in
psychology. Castration? Nonsense!
Imagine my surprise to be presented with the contents of my unconscious
and to observe thousands and thousands of scenes, so many scenes from every
period of my life, and what do I see?––acres and acres of unbelievable
super-energetic fantasies about or involving only one thing: Castration!"
[Norman, The Tangible Self, pp.
77-78.]
We
have seen in parts one and two of this series, the mythological imprint of this
punitive aspect of human archetype and ontology:
http://blog.theultranet.com/2013/06/who-fired-prometheus-part-1-our-barbaric-mystery.html
http://blog.theultranet.com/2013/06/who-fired-prometheus-pt-2-analysis-the-archetypal-mutilationour-masochistic-inheritance.html
One can read of the purpose of these images, and how they serve
to form the super-ego, which is inheritor of our Oedipal complex:
". .
.we can tell what lies hidden behind the ego's dread of the super-ego, its fear
of conscience. The higher being which later becomes the ego-ideal once
threatened the ego with castration, and this dread of castration is probably
the kernel round which the subsequent fear of conscience has gathered; it is
this dread that persists as the fear of conscience." [Sigmund Freud, “The
Ego and the Id” in A General Selection From The Works of Sigmund Freud,
p. 233.]
And we can see
the masochistic/passive /feminine implications revealed in the analysis of Prometheus
Bound offered in part two of this series:
“. . .the
castration complex always operates in the sense implied in its subject-matter:
it inhibits and limits masculinity and encourages femininity." [Sigmund
Freud, “Some Psychical Consequences of the Anatomical Distinction Between
the Sexes,” in The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund
Freud (vol. 19), p. 256.]
So the
question presents itself, from whence comes this ugly dread, this internalized
punitive barbarism with which we are all threatened, and how did it come to
find purchase within each of us? The
answer is to be found in the record of human history, and the trail of laws and
myths which follow in its train. This
image is now a part of our inherited phylogenetic and instinctual template: Its aspect now a ripe possibility waiting to
be brought to ontological fruition, a masochism as ripe fruit, swollen and
turgid, an ugly fruit in need of but a tender breeze to fall to earth and
disperse its poison. In his most worthy
book, The Greeks and the Irrational, E. R. Dodds, a superb Greek scholar
and philologist par excellence, draws the strings of history and psychology
together for us. This ugly imprint has
been nurtured over thousands and thousands of years. Its exact source is clear to discern with
Dodds's careful examination of the historical record.
"The
head of the household is its king . . . and his position is described by
Aristotle as analogous to that of a king.
Over his children his authority is in early times unlimited: he is free
to expose them in infancy, and in manhood to expel an erring or rebellious son
from the community . . . as Zeus himself cast out Hephaestos from Olympus for
siding with his mother." [Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, pp.
45-46.]
However, as
early as the 6th century BC, the situation had begun to change, and as social
conditions began to improve, and the father's authority became less and less absolute
in the face of these new social conditions leading to increased personal
freedom, the strict authoritarian structure of family life began to
loosen. Now, what was a shame
based dynamic, one based on external threat from the father, becomes a guilt
based dynamism, one based on an internalized threat, an internalized
moral structure in the true modern sense of the word emerges: super-ego. This is demonstrated by the need for laws
introduced by Solon, and later, by Plato, to safeguard the now threatened
patriarchal family structure. [Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, p.
46.]
Super-ego uses
severe repressions to create by internal means, what were behaviors,
inhibitions and restrictions previously brought about by external
patriarchal threat. Dodds fleshes the
idea out as follows:
"The
peculiar horror with which Greeks viewed offenses against a father, and the
peculiar religious sanctions to which the offender was thought to be exposed,
are in themselves suggestive of strong repressions. So are the many stories in which a father's
curse produces terrible consequences––stories like those of Phoenix, of
Hippolytus, of Pelops and his sons, of Oedipus and his sons––all of them, it
would seem, products of a relatively late period where the position of the
father was no longer entirely secure.
Suggestive in a different way, is the barbarous tale of Kronos and
Ouranos . . . the mythological projection of unconscious desires is surely
transparent––as Plato perhaps felt when he declared that this story was fit to
be communicated only to a very few . . . and should at all costs be kept from
the young." [Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, pp. 46-47.]
Here is a
synopsis of that myth. Please note the Oedipal and castration themes.
From, http://www.deathreference.com/Ke-Ma/Kronos.html:
"According
to the Greek poet Hesiod, in his Theogony (c. 750 B.C.E. ), Ouranos
("Sky") mated nightly with Gaia ("Earth"). When their
children were born, Ouranos hid them in Gaia's inward places. Painfully swollen
with offspring, she wrought a huge sickle and asked her children, six brothers
and six sisters (the Titans), to punish Ouranos. Only her youngest son, Kronos,
agreed. Giving him the sickle, she told him where to hide. When Ouranos next
lay on Gaia, Kronos grasped him with his left hand, the sickle in his right,
and cut off his genitals. From the drops of blood that shed on her, Gaia
conceived among others the Giants, and from the severed genitals, which fell
into the sea, a white foam arose from which was born the love goddess
Aphrodite.
Now
followed the rule of Kronos. He married his sister Rhea, who bore him three
daughters and three sons: Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus (the
Olympian gods). But Gaia and Ouranos had foretold that Kronos would be
over-thrown by a son, so he swallowed his children as each emerged from the
womb. About to bear her sixth child, Zeus, Rhea asked her parents how to save
him. They sent her to Crete, where she hid him in a cave on Mount Aegaeon. She
presented Kronos instead with a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, which he
thrust in his belly. Zeus grew apace and in time forced Kronos to yield up his
children. Once reborn, the gods waged war on the Titans, whom they overthrew, and
Zeus replaced Kronos as ruler."
(Please note
also, that some versions of the myth repeat the reversed wishful castration
theme, and Zeus also castrates his father in turn).
Now from the Dodds:
"And
when Plato wants to illustrate what happens when rational controls are not
functioning, his typical example is the Oedipus dream. . . it seems not
unreasonable to argue from identical symptoms to some similarity in the cause,
and conclude that the family situation in ancient Greece, like the family situation
today, gave rise to infantile conflicts whose echoes lingered in the
unconscious mind of the adult." [Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, p.
47.]
And lastly
Dodds assembles the entire picture for us in these words:
"The
psychologists have taught us, how potent a source of guilt feelings is the
pressure of unacknowledged desires. . . the human father had from the earliest
times his heavenly counterpart: Zeus pater. . . Zeus appears as a
Supernatural Head of the Household. . . it was natural to project onto the
heavenly Father those curious mixed feelings about the human one the child dare
not acknowledge. . . that would explain very nicely why the Archaic Age Zeus
appears by turns to be the inscrutable source of good and evil gifts alike. . .
as the awful judge. . .who punishes inexorably the capitol sin of
self-assertion, the sin of hubris.
(This last aspect corresponds to that phase in the development of family
relations when the authority of the father is felt to need the support of a
moral sanction; when "You will do it because I say so" gives place to
"You will do it because it is right.") [Dodds, The Greeks and the
Irrational, p. 48.]
Here in this
historical transition from an external shame based ethical structure, to an
internalized guilt based structure, in this internalization of the
patriarchal threat (introjection), we see the creation of our modern ethic, our
conscience, our masochistic capitulation: our super-ego. This historical basis for our phylogenetic
inheritance can be brought to light and assessed as to its healthy or
pathogenic contribution by way of economic analysis, and clinical example.
I will provide
that analysis in the next installment of this series. Once we clearly see the way the phylogenetic
impression is brought to bear and made to resonate by current situational
developments in upbringing, and, a precise account of the economic effects of
this ugly historical precipitate are made manifest in specific example, the
dismal, current picture of modern personality and ethical structure will be
complete. Then, it will be my happy task
to reveal the healthy alternative, the wondrous answer! For "the thing" can be removed, do
be sure of that! Particular formative
impressions can be brought up from under repression so as to disband, weaken
and eliminate super-ego… permanently!
Then, other healthy structures can be energized and used in a new and
novel way, to free our energies and allow even the worst of Life's abuses to be
reclaimed, and those energies used to healthy result, unbound from
fixation. Ethics are a function of
Empathy. Ethical structure, real ethics,
are not a function of threat! We will
soon see how much intelligence and happiness has been ruined, how much of
ourselves and our potential has been maligned and wasted for this barbaric
abuse, which we have so foolishly inculcated into our very being, and in the
height of sheer idiocy, proclaimed in our ignorance, not to be sadism and
waste, but, to be none other than the very height of human achievement, as if
capitulation before a tyrant were the essence of truth, as if obedience before
this ugly lie were in fact: virtue.
Rich Norman
References:
Dodds, E. R.
(1973). The greeks and the irrational.
Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Freud, S. (1926). The standard edition of
the complete
psychological works of Sigmund Freud volume
nineteen: The ego and the id, and other works.
London: Hogarth Press.
Norman, R. (2011). The tangible self.
O'Brien, OR.: Standing Dead Publications.
Rickman, J.
(Ed.) (1957).
A General Selection from the
Works
of Sigmund Freud.
New York,
NY: Doubleday.