The Psycho-Neurological Perspective

by Dr. Peter Meier, Founder of Applied Personal Science APSâ

Let me sketch the three interpretations of reality corresponding to the three brain functions and then return to the world, you and me with our relationships in shared human systems such as teams, organizations and cultures. Psychology (Model 1990) proposes two different kinds of transference in the psychoanalytic situation (in essence politically correct personal projection of ones brain content through words and power for money or vice versa), however, the brain and thus real life, gives us six ways to look at life depending on the context, namely through:

1. The CHEMICAL MEMORY: Based on acid production in the brain, it keeps our moods "alive" for between 20 min. and two days (short-term memory): The corresponding kind of transference is rarely fully analyzed and continues to develop even after treatment has ended: Psychologist like Model (1990) do not model it by call it the "dependent-containing transference." This is the core of the existing therapeutic alliance. It depends on the ROI-based rituals of analysis (time, place, fee, confidentiality, safe boundaries, etc.), the relative anonymity of the analyst, and idealizing beliefs about the analysand (e.g., that the analyst/world is more powerful than one's symptoms / personality). This kind of transference is what Jung referred to in the above passage as "an extremely important demand" that, if disappointed, can turn into "bitter hatred of the analysand." These psychological descriptions of the consequence of giving in to the short-term memory's interpretation of life shed light on the resulting ROI (return on investment) mentality: Since this brain function cannot sustain itself beyond two days, it must justify itself with an enforced return on its investment! Thus its strength lies in the fear of death; it tries to overcome it with ROI - elephants starve to death when their teeth are worn out, we humans can buy false teeth with our ROI, e.g. money. The weakness of the short-term memory is the absence of a history that could allow it to learn from its failures due to the lack of a sustainable record. It is no accident the ROI-based Union Bank of Switzerland tried to destroy documents when confronted with its past dealings with Nazi-Germany and that it even tried to make Mr. Meili, who discovered some of these cover-ups, irrelevant. He is now living in the USA, the first Swiss who sought asylum from the mobbing that endangered his life quality in this own country which is otherwise considered a model democracy. On the other hand the US passed a law to suit his personal cause of gaining asylum, may-be the first law that acknowledges individual life fulfillment..

Examples of short-term memory relevance: Emotional Intelligence, socializing

2. The ELECTRICAL MEMORY: The second kind of transference is called "iconic-projective" by Model. This is what we usually call transference proper. It is the projection of images and complexes into the intersubjective field. Of course, it occurs from both sides, but one is usually just talking only about transference from one side, the people/analysand to the world/ (psycho)analysts. It would be hard to talk about the world's countertransference for it is not responsible throughout our lives. The important contrasts between these two transferences are usefully summarized in the terms of Model as (1990, pp. 48-52): the dependent transference which is continually present throughout treatment, but the iconic transference is episodic (electric/reactive / unconscious until it happens) and eventually absent. Within the dependent transference, both analysand and analyst experience symbolic enactments of developmental conflicts (such as attachment-separation, dependence-in dependence and aggression-love). But in the iconic transference, both experience the recreation of specific images, such as Mother, Father, Brother, different from the general dynamic themes of the dependent transference. Effective interpretations enhance and strengthen the dependent-containing transference, but they resolve or diminish the iconic-projective one. The dependent-containing transference actually provides the safety, trust, and holding environment that allow the iconic transference to emerge and be understood. Poorly timed or ineffective interpretations of the iconic transference can be felt as a destruction of the dependent-containing one." This clearly expresses the direction psychology pursues; domination of the electrical (understood as primitive/sub-human) by the chemical, politically correct memory that leaves space to negotiate between cost/pain and benefit/lust. In economy one is more human and less wordy and simply talks realistically of supply and demand

Examples of ultra short-term memory relevance: reactive behavior, reflexes, gut reaction

3. The Stem-Brain - Reaction to Good/Bad: Finally, the third reality, which has been largly ignored (before Mr. Meili' case) is the ordinary relationship, what Jung calls the kinship libido-between two people struggling together through surviving life's difficulties in the face of the demands of treatment. Within the ordinary relationship, it is important to keep in mind that the patient (self/body) has hired the analyst (cerebrum/brain). When we think of the asymmetry of the analytic situation we are often thinking only in terms of the dependent-containing transference, or in terms of the powerful images of the iconic-projective transference. From the perspective of the ordinary relationship, the asymmetry is reversed. The therapist's livelihood depends on the patient; the world is just an abstract word, or nothing at all without real people.

Examples of stem-brain relevance: survival behavior, mobilizing exceptional strength

4. The Mid-Brain - Active Adaptation to Pain/Pleasure: That brings us back to Jung and Polly Young-Eisendrath: "I would like to describe how I see my psychoanalysis in each of these realities. I have already described my dependent-containing transference to Jung as he appeared to me initially in an idealizing identification. That changed as I began training to become an analyst in 1979. Careful and close reading of Jung's work, especially certain parts of Civilization in Transition, Aion, and Symbols of Transformation were poorly timed and overly rigidified interpretations. They ruptured the containing transference. I found some of his ideas, especially about women, to be belittling and insulting. I doubt that I could have sustained our analytical relationship had I not begun reading his letters at about the same time. In the letters I found a different voice-more flexible, often more imaginative and uncertain, and frequently inspiring. Over the years, the letters have helped me sustain a trusting interplay with Jung's more formal ideas and feelings. This interplay has sometimes been accompanied by comments from some colleagues that I am "not Jungian enough." This truly ineffective interpretation rouses indignation in me that I find mirrored in Jung. Especially in his letters, he criticizes any and all dogma, and vows that his approach is not a fixed set of ideas." This is an excellent example of a mid-brain trying to actively adapt to the pain/pleasure of the situation with some flashes of references to the long-term memory (written up facts). 

Examples of mid-brain relevance: Entertainment, creating a home

5. The Cerebrum - Searching for Right/Wrong: Now the factual/long-term memory handling brain takes over as follows in terms of what is right/wrong in terms of the assumed psychological theory of how to interpret one's own short-term memory/mid-brain: "In regard to the iconic-projective transference, initially I fantasized Jung as Great Father. Having been fathered by a tortured, maddening, aggressive, loving man I had known little solid fathering. I longed for the Oedipal romance. I wanted to know that it was possible to feel proud of, and close to Father. Jung seemed wiser, more cultured, and more knowledgeable than any man in my life up to then. Although I can barely recall the time--until I was four years old or so--in which I idealized my own father, I have many clear memories of being disgraced or demeaned by him. Gradually, as I learned more of Jung's history, of his relationships with women, including women patients, and of his advice to men about women, I could feel the old familiar shame and rage. When I first met Jung's concept of contrasexuality I found it freeing and enhancing. But as I read more and heard more, the images of anima and animus, and Masculine and Feminine, seemed like stereotypes into which one's experiences had to be fitted. Even more damaging was my sense that Jung misunderstood himself, that he never seriously respected any woman with whom he had a close relationship because he insisted that she carry for him some kind of long-term projection, anima or something else. As I wrestled with this Terrible Father, his power grew even stronger. The more I read new accounts of Jung's life, the more I found images that contrasted with my ideal Jung of the autobiography. I probably would have quit our relationship altogether had I not been able to renew again and again my dependent-containing transference by reading his letters."

Examples of frontal relevance: Architect, System Engineering

6. The Long-Term MEMORY - as a Reference: The rest is permanently recorded history: "This process culminated finally in a book that I wrote with James Hall called Jung's Self Psychology A Constructivist Perspective. There I was able to dialogue in depth with the Jung I found in the letters. Through that book especially, I spoke to Jung about our differences. He answered in a way that strengthened our bond. I can't say that the negative Father transference has been resolved. New information about Jung's life history is constantly emerging. Some of it has increased my familiar sense of disgrace and shame from Father as it burns within my own complex. But now I trust that I can resolve enough of my iconic transference to sustain the dependent-containing one that I need in order to go on developing in my analysis with Jung."

Examples of long-term memory relevance: historian, stories passed on, record keeping

Our ordinary relationship to the world thus often sustains us humans. Many times we remind ourselves that we chose to pursue all of this in our own world; we buy this and not that to get satisfaction, so to speak. In a free market situation no one forces us into anything - we are only tempted. No one else is responsible for the pain or transformation, and besides, we feel how much the world needs us for its liveliness. We people sustain and expand the world and take it to new horizons. This is a way of claiming our roots in the world. However, after all, we are not of this world. The mental play space in which we can entertain such idea offers different perspectives.Although this makes our relationships in and with it complicated, it allows the world's revitalization in our transcendence of it - after all the world in itself is not alive, it is a mere abstract!

Considering our personal relationship to the world brings us the hope that it will never deaden or rigidify. However, even if we fully resolve our worldly problems, we will get some other images, equally rich in potential for discussion. In expanding the understanding of the transcendent function through constructivism (accepting the reality that we are Creatures of a Creator in his Creation - C3), we can make it a priority to keep open a dialectical space for c3, control (forms), communicate (content) and command (meaning). In this space we can review concepts and analyze the iconic transference, develop the containing transference, and take responsibility for what it takes to fulfill our lives.

Sometimes, though, we encounter a kind of rigidity among systems guardians such as managers and lobbyists. In psychological terms it is either an idealizing transference that has never developed through feeling deep conflict with the world, or it is a Great Father-Mother or Genius projection that remains stuck in the form rather than seeing the dangers of closed-systems, pretending everything is all right. Sometimes the iconic image seems even to be of God. But in the world, to doubt its ROI-mentality is blasphemous. As long as one is ROI-dependent in ones opinions, there is little recognition for the ordinary human relationships with individual human beings like oneself,.

People, conditioned by their history lessons are usually glad that they don't have to live the lives of their ancestors which in the common understanding were even more forced into the hothouse of the dichotomies and splits of earlier ages. Sometimes now, however, doubts arise when confronted with post-modernism. Although most people still wouldn't want to be the norm, they often feel better when they think politically correctly rather than with integrity towards themselves. Our fellow humans all seem to be idolizing something else. They seem to expect that we will have a more complex, conflict-ridden, evolving dialogue with our own world-view, than they pretend to have had with theirs. Humanists and other ...ists still seem shocked, if not hurt, by an open struggle. Intellectuals have moved on to whole new horizons beyond traditional themes and theories to avoid life. Critiques of essentialism and sexism, revisions of the major concepts, and debates about mind models have fragmented and enriched discussions enormously. In the writings of many of our contemporary intellectuals, there is a healthy respect for the transcendent function and the dialectic of development. Of course people personally would like to feel the same openness to a dialectical space in regard to their major personal concepts, their transferences with the world, and their responsibilities for using and revising ideas.

Is There a Future for Men?
asks Andrew Samuels, Jungian Analyst (Society for Analytical Psychology, London) in the Guardian, 29 May 1995:

"First, can men change? Certainly, male behavior in the home and on the streets has not changed very much. But something that we could call the "aspirational atmosphere" may be changing. The problem is that educational, social and communal provision also needs to change in step with evolving aspirations"...

In accordance to the trend there has to be sense in which the answer to all three questions is "yes and no." We may hope that the media continue to try to also meet the hunger for complexity which is screaming for attention in the contemporary world alongside the far better known hunger for simplistic certitudes....

On the other hand, in "You 're Not What I Expected...", Polly.Young-Eisendraht (William Morrow New York) states: "Neither philosophy, theology nor psychology give models or concepts for trust and intimacy even just for heterosexual relationships!" The long reflection's short meaning: The so-called "humanities" have so far provided inadequate concepts to resolve the struggles in our heads. The fact is most concepts of the operational philosophy, theology, psychology, sociology and politics do not serve the people/analysant, but the analyst/world and the corresponding ROI-mentality! However, since most people would rather give in to their hunger for simplistic certitudes in favor of the need to understand the actual complexity of life, we have what we deserve just as one says about the people deserving their politicians...However, I myself do not identify with "people" and do not accept concepts that condemn certain of my brain activities in the name of the prevailing ROI-mentality!

In order to find out about The Therapeutic Alliance Possible

with a psycho-historic approach clickto: therapy

 mailto:[email protected]

This page hosted by

Get your own Free Home Page