The Dialectics of Repression.

If we use Freud’s early terms “pleasure principle” and “reality principle”, we can formulate the process of repression as follows:

Thesis the pleasure principle + Antithesis the reality principle =
Synthesis repression

The demands of reality repress the will to pleasure that was instilled in man during his prolonged dependence on his parents/guardians (by the pleasure, i.e., the feeling of power, this gave him).

Consequently, we can formulate the process of neurosis as follows:

Thesis repression + Antithesis the pleasure principle =
Synthesis neurosis

These two dialectical formulations have suggested to me a third:

Thesis neurosis + Antithesis the pleasure principle =
Synthesis

For thesis and antithesis can be turned around, so the pleasure principle is always the antithesis:

Thesis the reality principle + Antithesis the pleasure principle =
Synthesis repression + Antithesis the pleasure principle =
Synthesis neurosis + Antithesis the pleasure principle =
Synthesis

The human will to pleasure has been so deeply instilled in him during his prolonged infancy that it can probably never be eradicated during his lifetime (if man would evolve back so that human infancy would be less prolonged, the human will to pleasure might become eradicable).

It is always the pleasure principle that rebels against other principles or facts. In its rebellion against the reality principle, it must be suppressed (repressed), otherwise the person will come to harm (e.g., the child may stick its fingers in a power socket). So when it rebels against the reality principle, the result is repression (or death). When it rebels against repression, it, like a resistance movement rebelling against an oppressor, performs its activities underground: e.g., in dreams.

Now it may be hard to picture how it will rebel against neurosis. For me, the antithesis PP versus neurosis is too abstract. However, there is, in my view, no true difference between neurosis and sublimation. Sublimation is merely the socially acceptable form of neurosis. We may therefore understand sublimation as a form of neurosis, and neurosis as a form of sublimation. And for me, the antithesis PP versus sublimation is much easier to picture. The pleasure principle may battle against the tendency to sublimate it, may strive to lead “flown-away virtue”, to speak with Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, “back to the earth—yea, back to body and life” (TSZ, Of the Bestowing Virtue).

[size=95]Once hadst thou passions and calledst them evil. But now hast thou only thy virtues: they grew out of thy passions.
[ibid., Of Joys and Passions.][/size]

All in all it seems like an interesting theory, not without merit, but do you suppose other animals are not guided by a longing for pleasure? What about lions? Mainly it seems to me that for them, the reality principle is much less antagonistic to the pleasure principle.

What about lions? Please elaborate.

I see two limits to Freuds analysis:

1, given the case of many animals, the following of pleasure is not necessarily the result of an especially long nurturing phase.
2, the analysis of neurosis as an antagonism between pleasure principle and reality principle does not explain why these principles, in the human, are opposed.

Yes. . . Freud’s ideas are pretty imperfect, to say the least.

And basing such a complex and intricate neurochemical and sociological/psychological processes as human peasure or psychological-instinctive-emotional repression, or the evolutionary and sociological/ecological/psychological process of maintaining homeostasis with one’s environment (internal and external) on a Hegelian sort of dialectic is so oversimplifying the situation it is almost meaningless. Now while it is of course common sense to consider that we 1) want pleasure, 2) sometimes cannot have the pleasure we want, and 3) therefore sometimes fell repressed or frustrated, this is by no means any sort of brilliant or original insight.

Your 1, and 2, above are sound objections to a Freudian-Marxist sort of dialectical approach here. We can draw a difference between the human animal and the non-human animal, of course, and this will go a long way in isolating the problem here, but this sort of analysis goes far beyond the ability of the dialectic, or Freud, to handle.

You have not yet explained why you think lions are ‘guided by a longing for pleasure’.

I can’t wait for your non-dialectical, Deleuzian-Guattarian thread on these matters. This thread, however, is, as the title suggests, on the dialectics of repression.

And it is precisely on this that I am commenting.

Or am I not allowed to call your conclusions or ideas into question?

You cannot call my conclusions into question, because you refuse to ‘stoop down’ into the framework in which these conclusions are made. Of course you can call my ideas into question, e.g., the implicit idea that it is at all useful to approach these matters dialectically; by rejecting that idea, however, as you have done, you reject my whole OP, and can therefore have no more business in this thread (as any further input from you will be off-topic, ‘beyond’ the topic… Does this sound familiar?).

By calling your premises into question I thus call your conclusion into question as well. That is basic logic. It is also the primary means by which philosophical debate takes place - calling each other’s assumptions and premises into question.

If I challenge the idea that you might use a dialectical synthesis to reasonably consider the problem of repression, I am thus refuting your conclusion as well, assuming of course that my critiques are sound. Which, by the way, I wouldn’t mind if you commented on my thoughts regarding the inability of the dialectic to handle the complex and intricate psychological/sociological factors involved with repression. Feel free to comment on my overal idea that the dialectic is too simplistic to understand such a psychological concept - as a start, why exactly do you think that the dialectic might even be able to capture such an idea? Any examples as to where and how it has adequately explained similar ideas or concepts? Perhaps we need to first dive into a discussion of what the dialectical process is, and why it might (or might not) be capable of explaining a psychological process such as repression.

Ah, that needs explanation? This comes as a surprise. I can see it in their behavior, just like Freud did with humans, I suppose. They very clearly enjoy the comforts of life, respond to this type of stimulant. Many animals, especially mammals, appear to be guided by it.

Mammals in genersl have a relatively long nurturing phase - animals which come out of eggs would be, according to Freuds rationale, less driven by the pleasure principle.

I personally can see the use of dialectic in understanding repression. Synthetization of experience into abstractions does work in science, and that is what Freud was trying to do, not without success. His understanding was clearly imperfect, as he was the first to admit, but many have been helped by the methods derived from or inspired by his dialectic. And many have been hurt by it through abuse of these methods.

In any case I can relate to the OP as far as a general principle. I’m also interested in the outcome of neurosis put to further scrutiny using this dialectic, though I can usually only relate if an illustration or example is given to verify every step. Any absolute truths are not to be expected, whenever logic is used, just functional understanding. TLM, I think you put your standards here too high for Sauwelios, me and yourself, since we all have to use rationality, which in it’s very essence is a dialectic tool.

Perhaps you need to do so in a separate thread, rather than vulturing on mine.

Yes, I also think the distinction is relative (as Brown says, based on a quantitative phenomenon). For example, dogs dream, i.e., they, too, are neurotic.

Freud did not just ‘see it in their behaviour’, he psychoanalysed himself as well as them.

So given that dogs dream, objection 1 possibly falls away, which leaves 2: The analysis of neurosis as an antagonism between pleasure principle and reality principle does not explain why these principles, in the human, are opposed.

Why ‘just’? Seeing (also, projecting) things in an animals behavior is fundamental to psychoanalysis.

  1. a method of investigation of the mind;
  2. a systematized set of theories about human behaviour;
  3. a method of treatment of psychological or emotional illness.

It has not been shown that, in other animals who have the will to pleasure, the principles are not opposed. But it could also be the case that it’s true that only human beings have that will. For the essential distinction is that between the will to power and the will to pleasure. Pleasure is the feeling of power, but this is only a side-effect in the case of the will to power; whereas in the case of the will to pleasure, it is the goal.

Psychoanalysis is aimed at explaining neurosis and sublimation.

Really, the more I think of it, the more reasonable my anger appears. Just ask yourself what the object of this vulture could possibly be—to get me to change both the title and text of my OP to: “Ask The Last Man what it should say here.”? And considering our earlier clash in my thread on my rank name change, what hope could he have of accomplishing his objective? Conclusion: it must be either malice or thoughtlessness that drives him to reply to my posts.

Note that he does not offer any alternative approach himself! Do we, falling prostrate at his feet, have to ask him what, O wise one, we should do? But the answer is evident: read Deleuze, who thought that one could not gain anything from reading Nietzsche if one did not often laugh like an idiot while doing so! Well, I, for one, am glad that malady is not too contagious (I have read his short book on Nietzsche). I will leave that to clowns like this:

So do you see the will to power as analogous with the reality principle?
Neurosis + pleasure principle = psychosis? Or how did Freud see that?
I think by the way that the pleasure principle could be what I mean with the lust for truth.

Well written. Perhaps there is some truth in it even. But it is more probably an interest in the material that drives him to respond. What is the material?

If I may be so free: a conservative Nietzschean interpretation of Freud. In stark contrast appears to stand the postmodernist Deleuz-/Guattarian interpretation of the Austrian doctor. Freud himself was an admirer of Nietzsche, to put it mildly - he did not want to read him, because he feared that the German had already eloquently formulated much of what he was trying to understand. But what about the postmodernists?

Is it possible that we understand something both through the eyes, or rather the tongue, of the German and the Frenchman? What is it that we would have to understand? What metaphysics can rise above the most fundamental human attribute - taste?

Not quite. As you know, I see reality as the will to power and nothing besides. And the will to be realistic (e.g., to control one’s will to sexual pleasure in order not to be removed from society) is a will to power, I think, that is, a will to actual power and not just to the feeling of power (pleasure). Perhaps the question is just whether one takes a short-term or a long-term view. But pleasure itself is not concerned with death.

Nietzsche says somewhere that every ‘center of force’ would extend its dominion over the whole universe if it could, but that it is kept in check by other such centers. The thing is that during his infancy, man’s will to extend his dominion is kept relatively unchecked for a relatively long time. One should definitely think of the Buddha who was protected by his father until he was 18, then suddenly came into contact with the real world, and subsequently devised a teaching that taught that to live was to suffer, and that one should therefore seek to extinguish the fire of the will, which he understood as the cause of all disharmony and thereby of all suffering. Thus Freud’s later terms “death instinct” and “Nirvana principle” are closely related.

Nietzsche often says that the will to power is not concerned with pleasure but (as is obvious) with power. My current Freudian-Nietzschean view, then, is that man’s will to power and his will to pleasure (which is sort of a ‘corrupted’ will to power, meaning both spoiled and perverse) are in lifelong conflict. His will to power must win each battle, otherwise there is death. I have defined three such battles:

  1. Reality principle Vs. Pleasure principle

The outcome of this battle is the enslavement (repression) of the pleasure principle by the reality principle.

  1. Repression Vs. Pleasure principle

Here the pleasure principle rebels against its oppression underground. Though the reality principle suppresses (represses) the pleasure principle, the latter finds an outlet ‘underground’, i.e., in dreams, Freudian slips, and neurosis in the narrow sense (these three constitute neurosis in the broader sense), or in religion, art, etc. (sublimation). Thus the result is neurosis or sublimation.

I’m not sure how Freud saw this. And at least you’ve suggested a result of the third battle. But why do you think the pleasure principle’s battle against sublimation must result in psychosis? Psychosis does not sound like a step forward from sublimation, as sublimation does from repression. The basic suggestion of my OP was that, though the pleasure principle can never win—until death—, its ceaseless striving forces an ever thicker solution (e.g., first a three to one solution, then a five to two solution, then a seven to three solution, etc.); from the perspective of the pleasure principle, the result becomes ever more refined.

Could be. “Pleasure” is Lust in the German, of course (also “joy”). And does not Crowley inextricably connect pleasure with the truth in his Little Essay on sorrow?