Two times two

Dear reader.

I think I want to say two things today. In fact two times two things.

The first is hello.

The second is goodbye.

Because I have been on this journey of analyzing psychoanalysis for over four years now, a doctoral student’s timespan, and I feel I have come to a full perspective.

I started advocating a religion of the real, a religion of the Mother, nature and the body as different from the kind of religion psychoanalysis attacked. The religion of the compulsions, the obligations, the musts and all of the guilt and shame associated with the preaches and sermons that were given to man in an attempt to make him conform and obey to the prescriptions of this or that religion or church.

Of course it could never be a psychoanalytic purpose or aim to try and enforce rules and regulations upon the human soul, for which it so cherishes freedom and choice. So it was kind of an emancipatory movement of psychoanalysis to say that religion, as commonly known, practiced and understood, was nothing then a projection of the symbolico-imaginary complex, the realm of the ego with its pressure and the super-ego with its rules the ego lives by in applying these pressures upon the soul.

I could not agree more, but I did feel there was a different form of religion. The religion of the real, the religion of the feminine, which was more common in prehistorical times and concerned the sacredness of the womb of nature within man lived and which was abundant, caring and healing, giving in endless generosity from its herbs, fruits and animals.

I felt the need to distinguish the dislike for the authority of the ego and the mind, known for its debilitating and sickening influence and characteristics, from a love and affection for the natural world and the whole of reality. I did feel that abandoning all of our respect and mindfulness for and of no matter what, resulted, as I felt it, in a kind of carte blanche for some form of juvenile and reckless aggression towards reality. If nothing is sacred, and it is even wrong to think anything is, then we can and maybe should just destroy everything.

I think religion is not a bad thing, as long as it is just a basic respect and wonder with regards to the existence of reality, which is and remains a miracle and a blessing to us all.

I fact, I think that in declaring also the Mother-Goddess religion of ancient times taboo, that we are in fact just giving into and playing fully into the cards of the ego, which is about nothing else than making the real disappear. In dispelling every respect for the sacredness of nature, we are in fact doing what the preachers of the male religions want us to do: vilifying and desacralizing the real, the body, the emotions, the one thing psychoanalysis should in fact respect and fight for. Standing up for the feminine is in fact a way to protect us from the ego, and this I believe is fully in line with the reason psychoanalysis may have to point religion to the trash. Respecting the feminine precisely strengthens the soul and shields it from the obscuring impositions of the shadow.

The second thing I have tried to do, is establish a link between the threefold structure of human neurosis as portrayed in the Borromean knot, and the organization of countries and states by the means of law and order.

I have tried to show that the people are like the soul, invaded upon by the police, who get their reasons and rationale from the law. In so doing I have tried to advocate that psychoanalytic logic would be fundamentally anarchist, as it does not like the imaginary of the ego invading the soul, nor does it support living by the inner law of the prescribing super-ego’s symbolic dimension.

So in my initial vision, from which I have never strayed, psychoanalysis is all about an anarchistic way of life in full reverence of the sacredness of nature, sexuality, the body and the soul.

I believe in so portraying and elaborating Freud and Lacan’s visions, I have painted a vision of a world of freedom. Freedom from all of the rules and pressures man and his kind suffer from. A suffering that is unknown to the animal, the plant, the rock or the river. A suffering that is human, and humanity’s alone.

Now, I have said I wanted to say two things, and in fact, two times two things. The first two were hello and goodbye, as I feel I have come to a satisfying view on things, psychoanalysis-wise, and the second two are just some minor ways of defense, some minor ways in which the ego functions, that I would like to cast a light on, as I think these two can enlighten the whole spectrum of human existence as I have come to see and explain it lately.

They are denial and projection.

The two go well together. And they are all about what humans call lying. I did not cause that, I did not do that, I did not say that, it was him or her that caused it, did it, said it.

So because it is not a part of the inner reality, it is appointed a place in the outer.

Saying it is not a part of our inner truth, is denial.

Positioning it in some outer space or form, is projecting.

And the two go well together.

So first I would like to work this out with regards to the original sin, the primal repression, where the innocent soul bows its head to the accusations of the ego and pleads guilty of crimes it never committed, before starting to pay for them in the symbolic stage that comes with the Oedipus.

What more is needed for innocence to become guiltiness, than the denial of the truth?

If the ego denies that the soul is innocent, then it must be guilty.

So denial, I think, is the tool the ego first uses when clearing space in the realms of the light for its shadow-identity to thrive in. It denies the truth of the soul.

And when we deny and hide the truth, we become free to invent any and every alternative. That is what is so great about being human. Anything is possible, as long as you hide away the truth. For the truth is the truth, and it cannot be changed. The truth is a fact, and it is what it is. But if you insist that things are not what they are, you can claim them to be anything you can think of, anything you can invent.

So in fact lying and madness go hand in hand, and it is frustrating to take away people’s illusions and confront them with the one and only purest truth.

They prefer the illusions.

It gives them a sense of freedom.

But there is no peace I believe, in this mad kind of freedom.

There is only a feeling in my heart of feeling sorry for them, and thinking o well, they will learn eventually, and giving up the fight. And I have given up many fights. I have said ‘o well’ many times, and I have left them to find out on their own more often than I would like. Always with a feeling of frustration, of why can’t you see, and why won’t you admit. What are you afraid of? But hell…

For I think the revelation and acknowledgement of the truth brings us more security and peace than any form of substitution we design for it. There is no security in madness, there is no peace in keeping up the lies. It is only an eternal (or not, Freud wondered) escaping of reality. And in the end, reality is what we have to face.

And this is not so bad.

I believe this is peace at last.

Breathing out, and saying yes to what you see, to what you hear, to what you know.

But the ego loves denying, it loves saying that what is, is not. It loves to make things disappear, and the first thing it kills is innocence. The eternal innocence of the universal soul.

So denial, as the mechanism for the primal repression.

The second mechanism of defense that I think explains a lot, is projection.

Projection I think is like lying about lying. You deny that you lied. It was someone else who lied, it is someone else who’s lying.

It is when the shadow hides itself, when the ego represses itself, as Freud proposed it could.

Projection I believe explains why we have human states and countries organized by law and order as we do. For the law and the order that the ego imprints upon the soul, are not given true recognition. We are free. Humans are free we believe. So the law and order, which is denied on the inside, that is, the hiding itself of the ego, comes to make its appearance in the outer world.

It is the police that freeze our movements, it is the politician that is commanding us what to do.

In fact, I believe if we saw we were ruled and oppressed from within, the projection could stop, and we would create such states and countries no more.

And we would seek freedom, not by the outer means of demonstrating, protesting and perhaps destroying property, but by cultivating the inner ways of meditation, right livelihood, speaking the truth, being honest with ourselves, dancing, painting, singing and living in joy and ecstasy.

We would seek inner freedom, as it is our denial of the prison in our head that makes for the construction of prisons in the outer world.

Of course, I advocate working on both levels, but it will never disappear externally if it does not disappear within.

As long as there is ego, there will be police, and as long as there are compulsions within, there will be laws in the outer world.

They are invented by us, by humans!

They are a human thing.

A psychodynamic thing.

And I believe we can be free, within as without, without as within.

But it is a journey that begins in lies, denial, projection and confusion, and is oriented towards authenticity, recognition, acceptance and simplicity. Some may call it boring. Some may find more excitement in all that could be true, if the actual truth weren’t the actual truth. Some take more joy in idle fantasies, while to others, all of this arousal is unnecessary and disturbing.

It is a matter of pleasure principle.

Personally, I prefer a simple life of truth and acceptance, rather than clinging to illusions and trying with all my effort to turn them into ‘reality’. But to each his thing, and to each his liking.

So to say goodbye, I just want to say that I have done no more than use psychoanalysis as it is, in what it says and what it knows, and build a logic from that. I have invented nothing new. I have simply said if A is B and B is C, and A must be C. Just a simple logic I have followed, and it can all be found in what has been written and known already.

I have done nothing new, unless you want to say that thinking and logic is something that was never practiced before the thinker that I am came along.

But that would be taking too much credit.

I hope you have enjoyed the ride, I hope you have enjoyed the journey.

And I hope, somewhere leaving this land of Oz, that we may come yet to discover the anarchy of love, the reverence of the Mother in true lives of freedom, within as without, and that reality may be our sister and truth may be our brother in all of the simple creatures that can make up the human race.

So to you I wish simply… peace.