Ruslip Manor Farm Poetry Read 25th Feb 2011

Some nights psychologists need to simply switch off and tonight was the night. Down at the Manor Farm Library in Ruislip, I was up for the quarterly event of doing a poetry read with a warm group of friends. What a lovely night taking it in turns to read favourite poems and some original work from those present including me. The topic was summer, love and relaxation. How ironic that what I had to talk about was conflict and how not everyone has this privilege in a relationship! So there we were reading one by one around the table and what such fun it was as we all went into character. Some new authors, guests and facilitators all joining in. I just could not help myself reading my work It’s all Economics, Narcissistic Withdrawal and I am Alone as my contribution of Social Awareness, that in this world, not everyone is happy, even though this is all we most desire.

Interestingly I found a book on the table ‘101 Poems That Could Save Your Life, an anthology of emotional first aid’, edited by Daisy Goodwin. Having gone around the table for a read twice, on the third read, I thought I would end on a humorous note on the section in the book on Divorce. Vicky Feavour and Sophie Hannah use poetry as a means to cope.

THE END OF LOVE

The end of love should be a big event.
It should involve the hiring of a hall.
Why the hell not! It happens to us all.
Why should it pass without acknowledgement.

Suits should be dry-cleaned, invitations sent.
Whatever form it takes – a tiff, a brawl –
The end of love should be a big event.
It should involve the hiring of a hall.

Better than the unquestioning decent
Into the trap of silence, than the crawl
From visible to hidden, door to wall.

Get the announcement made, the money spent.
The end of love should be a big event.
It should involve the hiring of a hall

Courtesy Sophie Hannah

I find myself here suddenly warding off defence mechanisms, before I got to bed, through humour, and that in itself highlights the agony doesn’t it.

Freud and Jung or Freud, and Jung?

Dear Readers

It seems like I will not go to sleep until I get this all off my chest. I am thinking about Freud and Jung right now and they are very much ‘alive’ in my head. I am comparing how influenced I have been by Freud’s drives theory and how active it has been in my life and relationships, both past and present. Yes it’s an old theory of the expression of libido and yet on reflection there does seem to be some logic in how gratification might be played out in terms of how the pleasure and unpleasure principle may be fuelling this recession! However, I am not here to talk about recession tonight.

What I am thinking about though, is the relationship between Freud and Jung. What it seems, is that they could have both been trying to fulfil  a fantasy in each other, that is, Freud and his ideal son and Jung and his ideal father. We all know what they say about ideals don’t we. That’s right. It’s just and ideal. It would be great if we could all remember this in significant relationships wouldn’t it.

These men remind me of a kind of push and pull relationship, with both trying to sway each other to their way of thinking. If only they could see the future now in terms of how linear their developmental theories are and in some respects they might even complement each other, rather than ending in a breakdown of a relationship.

So Freud postulated the stages of the sexual drives theory and the idea of neurosis is rooted in unresolved conflicts produced by childhood experiences.  Thereafter his idea that the Oedipus Complex being the ‘nucleus’ of neurosis, that is, a fixation to a experience of early childhood in the early family group became the likely cause.  This notion of Freud's of developmental block or of shutting off of the psyche, in my view derserves another page of discussion.   On the other hand Jung for whatever reason focussed away from childhood experiences and attributed neurosis not just down to the sexual drive but probably to being ‘dammed up libido’, that is, energy. I wonder, is that not what Freud was saying when he likened his drives theory to ‘psychodynamics’? It does intrigue me what they had to talk about in their first ever meeting for 13 hours uninterrupted, other than that dreams have meaning!

I am quite delighted that Jung had something major to add to this subject of energy in terms of the unconscious. In my view he raised a very important point of what is beyond the ‘personal unconscious’ (Freud)? I find it quite fascinating how he came up with the answer ‘the collective unconscious’ (Jung), even though there still does not seem to be a definitive description of what it is, other than his explanation of archetypal images from different cultures handed down throughout the generations in the form of stories, images or symbols from my understanding. I suppose when you take one of his client's cases where the patient sees ‘the sun with an image of a shape like a phallic next to it’ and Jung finds a similar story in his research a few years later, one cannot doubt the collective unconscious and agree that these kind of expressions can come out as overwhelming emotions.  All credit due to Jung on creating a new psychology focussing on how a person can be helped psychologically in the context of neurosis perhaps being a blockage in a person's life now, or some kind of obstacle in their current path.

I am rather fascinated on his views on introverts and extroverts and psychological types, but that’s another subject on another day. Good night.

Bibliography
Fordham F., (1956), An Introduction to Jung's Psychology : A Pelican Book

Barrett K., (2011), Freud Museum, Introducing Psychoanalysis, Lectures

Does Anyone Really Understand?

What does December 2010 bring up for me? Enlightenment and closure on 2007, from an investigative point of view! If we were to apply a principle in psychology that most things that we think about are influenced by triggers that go back to ‘the previous trigger, then the previous trigger and so on’ (Charcot). I am talking here about related pictures or scenes that we remember, that may take us back to the first operative scene of trauma (Freud). It would be plausible then to accept that all this activity on this blog is normal, even though some might find it a neurotic activity. When did it ever become abnormal to express overwhelming emotions?

Having recently scanned Facebook to find out what everyone else is up to and where I sit in the stream of time, I have come up with “nothing new under the sun ...”, an old bible quotation. However, what I will say is one of the most complicated and sought after thing in anyone’s world is “relationship”. I say this because I happened to be up at 1 am one morning thinking and writing about how relationship has worked out for me since 2007, when I thought that I was in a relationship for life, believing that I knew the person I devoted myself to. I have now since accepted that it is impossible to really know anyone completely, let alone the desire to conduct a personal self-analysis, as we are all on a journey of self-discovery aren’t we. This epiphany has therefore released me from my punitive superego, that is, that moral code, to get every single thing right in the context of relationship; total gibberish.

On the other hand, 2010 had produced many achievements for me, I dare say and yet an awareness of certain failures, that I now have an opportunity to make better in 2011, if I choose to give positive energy to it!

One delightful challenge is to read approximately 24 books this year on Freud’s Complete Psychological works, so where will I possibly have the time to focus on negative energy? On reflection, it seems a futile exercise to go back in my neurology to try to put right what was wrong; therefore, maybe I can do well with remembering Freud’s notion of “forgetting”, even though it might 'trigger' remembering what I don’t want to remember! I put my hands up – it’s a defence, but who cares, we all use defences to some extent don’t we – it’s only human.

I seem to spend some time each day relaxing and pondering on where my brain is going to take me now, as it does have this pattern of exploring the most complex level of thought and contemporary psychodynamic theories of how it applies in the 21st Century, these days. This is one of the reasons for my trips to London every week, for some lively and interesting complex debate and discussions, although there is a deeper quest for understanding conflict in our internal and external world, with a view of finding the key to deeper happiness, which could well be the focus or attention to “now”. It makes sense then to take a look at the comparisons of Freud and Jung on the theories of sexuality, neurosis and Jung’s personal creative thoughts on personality types, creativity; first part of life and individuation; second part of life. Somehow I am beginning to feel that there might have been an unconscious theme of intention to achieve certain aspects of the purpose in life that Jung devoted his life to.

However, I will end today, on ‘what a person thinks they might know about me’, in the context of the art of knowing or understanding which is often pointless without action. We are all good listeners aren’t we and great reflectors when someone says something, as if, perhaps we were the original thinker’s behind the thought, when it was likely something that we have already heard as the facts from “the horse’s mouth”.

There we are, just a little muse on the art of knowing, the use of knowing, and a kind of knowing that produced ‘no action’ and probably an end to relations.

 

 

WHAT IT IS TO KNOW


I wonder if what it is to know

Is to show whether you really

Understand the internal flow



Of the pain, hurt and confusion

That led to the delusion

That later emerged as an illusion.



So, is the art of knowing merely to have

A set of facts based on following

Certain tracks, or were you merely distracted,



Just for a moment, when you

Remembered that I and others as objects existed.

Jennifer Hooper (c) Dec 2010