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:
Reality principle Vs. Pleasure principle
The outcome of this battle is the enslavement (repression) of the pleasure principle by the reality principle.
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?
But I did offer an alternative. My point was that the dialectical approach alone cannot sufficiently account for repression (related to this is how Freud’s understanding of the reality principle and the pleasure principle is likewise insufficient).
There are innumerable drives and unconscious factors involved in something like repression, as well as environmental factors as well: genetics, family rearing, one’s society and cultural customs. Does a male or female repress more based on a divergence from expected or desired reality as opposed to actual reality? Does one’s family and values he was raised with affect his propensity to instinctively repress his urges for pleasure (e.g. what is the role of personality, common values or intellect)? And what social outlets exist for this repressed energy, and how does the existence of these potential outlets (sports, video games/media, religion, crime, leisure, drugs, sex, etc) affect the initial impulse and need to repress?
In terms of the unconscious we have to reconcile with cognitive dissonance - if we understand repression dialectically in terms of Freud’s reality (R) and pleasure (P) principles, then is it merely the apperception and implicit awareness of this disconnect that drives repression, or is a more conscious dissonance involved here which would put repression in both the conscious and unconscious camps, as well as both the cognitive and emotional? Freud’s R and P span this sort of awareness, but in terms of actually describing what is going on in the mind or biological brain they are vague concepts, their ability to describe is limited as a result. Thus we must (as was another of my initial points here) take a closer and more critical look at the terms involved here:
First, R as the idea that there exists a set of demands and conditions upon one’s existence, and these can be known by man through various ways. How are these known? It seems irrelevant to Freud. That they exist to be summed up under one ‘principle’ is enough for him. Are our perceptions of these demands and conditions accurate? Once again this seems not to matter much. Freud can form a R based solely on the idea of the simple and irrefutable fact that the environment has limitations built into it. As with much of Freud, this is not some grand realisation, but common sense and also quite obvious from the start. Yet if we are to understand repression then the relationship between R and P needs to be outlined in greater detail, else we are just speculating and making things up (which is of course what Freud did much of the time). Without an understanding of how the apperception of environmental demands and conditions impacts influences man’s expectations and psyche we cannot know how it interacts with P. For example, to illustrate this point: John desires a new car, as his current car is almost broken down. He realises that he does not have very much money at the moment. How does he guage his desire for a new car (his pleasure) as it relates to the reality of the possibility for purchasing a new car? Does he wait a while to save more money to thus better satisfy his pleasure with a better car? Or does he give in and buy a sufficient but cheaper car, giving him sooner pleasure but at the expense of the strength or amount of the pleasure itself? And which truly represents a repression, if any? If indeed this is the meaning of repression, the practical and forced limitation of P, then repression amounts to nothing more than R itself and thus the entire dialectical synthesis breaks down into self-reference and circularity.
Next, this of course leads us into analysing P a bit more. How do we simply take Freud at his word that “pleasure” is the motivating factor? If we isolate P without R first, we see how P is the result of one’s internal biological needs, psychological desires, impulses and instincts and conditionings - all of these can come together to generate the type of pleasure that we seek. Does John want a red sportscar or a black SUV? Does he want a small compact or a economical hybrid? Does he value speed more than gas mileage, flashy looks over long-term reliability? He might look at his own experiences to understand where these more specific desires come from - we can be sure that they do come from somewhere, but in terms of P itself they are somewhat irrelevant; however they become very relevant when we posit P in the presence of R: R places restrictions on P and thus forces John to actualise his nuances of pleasure, weighing one desire against another. If an economical car conforms to R more than a flashy car, but his desire (pleasure) for a flashy car exceeds that for an economical car, how does he reconcile this? In what method does he place this reconciliation? And certainly we can see how different individuals, based on their values, character, impulsiveness, personality, intellect and reasoning ability can arrive at different means and results from such an reconciliation? And what about how one’s culture and social rules and norms impacts all of these personal factors involved here?
So we see how P in terms of R is a tricky subject for John, as it is for anyone - R imposes real restrictions on P that must be reconciled somehow. And as Freud would have us believe, if P is not satisfied as much as it possibly can be then repression results - but one problem with this is that P can never be maximized when it is bound to R. Thus repression is seen by Freud as an inevitability - but is it really? Are we all and always repressing ourselves on a deeper level, merely because our P is not maximized to the highest possible extent? That seems foolish because it implies that R acts on P but that P cannot change as a result of this - P can change, and indeed does change, based on R. Given numerous interactions with one’s environment P moves to conform to R over time. P changes, and so we can see that the ‘P in terms of R = repression’ is simplistic in that it does not account for the possibiliy that P can decrease to diminish repression, to the point where potentially P = R! and thus repression ceases (understand ‘=’ here as only representing the alignment of P and R to a degree sufficient to fail to cause the generation of repression). When our desires (pleasures) are brought into more direct alignment with the possibilities presented to us by our reality, repression fades as there is no longer any need for repression to be generated at all. So the dialectic here focuses only on synthesising R and P first, and then synthesising repression and R, but this comes at the expense of realising that repression can drop to zero, or near-zero.
Another factor the dialectic here does not take into account is that the synthesis of P with repression itself can result not only in more repression of an unconscious type, but also in the reduction of P itself - P can change based on R, but what about based on repression? Of course P will change in the presence of repression, as the same psychological compensating mechanisms of homeostasis and reaction which generate repression to begin with in order to maintain P are at work in subsequently reducing P in the presence of an otherwise irreducible repression (if R cannot be changed and repression cannot be mitigated by other means, P will tend to change itself).
Perhaps you begin to see what I mean here? Freud cannot possibly account for all of these subtleties. Even the simple case of “John wants a new car” cannot be handled by a dialectical synthesis, not without a complete generalising and ignorance of the true factors involved in John’s decision, and the relationships these factors play with each other. . . the dialectic ignores the quality or type of relations between R and P (because it is ignorant of what constitutes R and P in themselves, and also of what these constitutive factors subsequently constitute in relation to each other), and thus is doomed to misunderstand these relations.
Absent this more detailed and critical attempt to understand R, P and repression, Freud’s dialectical synthesis of ‘P, R = repression’ amounts to nothing more than a completely obvious common sense, and has almost no explanatory or descriptive power at all - in otherwords it is all but useless.
It would also be nice if you were willing to entertain alternative ideas here, ones that (perhaps) run counter to your own assumptions. . . . Why not leave personal bravado and hubris out of this? You dont like me, I dont care, so lets move on shall we? Can we not have a discussion in the realm of ideas here, based on the content herein, rather than your resorting to deliberately ignoring ideas that are beyond your own and falling back on ad hominem every time? Lets just be adults, shall we?
I would add that the whole polarity between P and R and the resulting repression reminds me of the mechanism behind ressentiment. It seems to fit within the domain of slave morality, whereas P = R, as seems to be the case with cats and other powerful predators, appears to be a formula for master morality.
Yes that is a good comparison I think - repression as the psychological result of a willing-to only in terms of one’s weaknesses, as a rebellion against a reality that cannot be confronted and overcome on one’s own merit. This does seem to be an underlying motive behind both Freudian repression and Nietzschean resentiment. . . for Nietzsche the slave (repressed) derives his goodness by contrast to another person/entity/force rather than from within his own nature (as Deleuze points out, this exemplifies the difference for Nietzsche between defining oneself as good first and then as a consequence of this everyone else of a different type as bad (master morality), whereas the slave morality of resentiment would first define the other as bad or evil, and then consequently define oneself as good only afterwards). But relating this Nietzschean model to Freud’s P and R seems not to perfectly coincide, even though an element of “willing-to weakness” seems present in each.
As I see it this could relate to the P and R principles if we assume that P is analogous to the willing-to and R is analogous to the object of one’s resentiment (which can be just about anything), but it seems that Freud defines his ideas more in line with the structure of the mind, how it works fundamentally rather than as a certain method of operation, which Nietzschean morality appears as. Freud’s P and R are also seen through the context of the Oedipal triangles, primary and secondary, and for Nietzsche there is no such implicit power dynamic behind resentiment, other than one’s own direct relationship to his environment. Repression for Freud seems the result of a mostly automatic and completely unconscious lack of ability to satisfy a pleasure desire in terms of the Id, while repression under a Nietzschean master-slave morality perspective would seem to be more of a deliberate or perhaps semi-conscious result of one’s willing-to a certain goal, objective, physical or emotional state, power, as opposed to Freud’s reliance only on pleasure to derive a differential and thus repression.
Nietzsche makes no use of the Id (or Eg or Superego as Freud understands them), nor does he see an implicit and inescapable triangle of familial power differentials at the heart of the human psyche, so for Nietzsche repression is much more of a personal, direct result of one’s circumstances combined with one’s nature (which is more “blood” or genetics as opposed to imposed authoritative structure from without as the result of early rearing). Repression in the Freudian sense would not really exist for Nietzsche - only resentiment of a broader and also more personal type. Freud probably borrowed (without giving due credit) some of his understanding of the unconscious drives from Nietzsche’s notions of resentiment and master-slave morality, but twisted them to fit into his overall familial-sexual and psychoanalytic frameworks.
Ah, would that it would be so simple… First off, the whole point of Freudianism is that P does not tend to decrease in a lifetime. Perhaps men could be bred, eventually, in whom P=R. The question is then if that would be desirable for anyone—but perhaps this is an absurd question, as such men would no longer desire, but only care about reality… No more ‘ought’, but now only ‘is’! But why would we, in whom P is not equal to R, desire the existence of such men?—
Secondly, yes, there is a connection with the dynamic of master and slave morality, but it’s not as if masters are free from neurosis/sublimation. The thing is that the master society (the society ruled by masters) is a kind of ressentimental slave in times of peace:
[M]odern man does not feel ashamed about being in part
a slave, because he is taught that the slave in him has dignity for
serving the “master”, the “genius”, in him.
Modern man is not the only “slave” who resembles the aristocratic
State as a whole. In the second treatise of the Genealogy, Nietzsche
describes how the will to power of the vanquished man turns inward.
This closely resembles, methinks, how the will to power of the State
turns inward when it cannot discharge itself outward - that is, in
times of peace…
In times of peace, the warlike instincts of the nobility are forced to
turn inward, against itself. Nobleman than battles nobleman, instead
of fighting together against a common enemy. This battle may take the
form of jousting, as it did, for instance, in the Middle Ages; but it
may also take more “spiritual” forms, as in the Greek dramatic contests.
In the case of the aristocratic State, it is the warrior class, the
State’s will to power incarnate, which turns against itself when it
cannot discharge itself outward. Likewise, in the vanquished, the enslaved man, it is his will to power which turns against itself.
This means the enslaved man, at least the one in whom the bad
conscience develops (see the second treatise of the Genealogy), still
has “chaos” in him - that is, there is still a (blond) beast in him,
and it is this that turns against itself when it can no longer
discharge its power-will outward.
This type of enslaved man, then, ranks higher than the last man,
because the last man has no chaos in him any longer. The type of
enslaved man that has, however, is the man of ressentiment.
The State, in Nietzsche’s non-modern sense of the word, thus has two
effects in times of peace. In times of peace, it is itself like an
enslaved man of the above-mentioned type, the beast in which - id est,
the nobility - turns against itself: nobles compete with nobles in
various possible contests. Only in war is the State free again, is the
beast in it, the nobility, free to discharge its will to power
outward, as one soul.
The other effect is the effect it has on the enslaved man of the
above-mentioned type. In him his chaos, his bestial side, his instinct for power, turns against itself, creating the bad
conscience (for he now feels bad for having such instincts - for
having natural urges arise in him).
Now about this second effect, Nietzsche says:
“All instincts that do not discharge themselves outwardly turn
inward — this is what I call the internalization of man: thus it
was that man first developed what was later called his “soul.” The
entire inner world, originally as thin as if it were stretched between
two membranes, expanded and extended itself, acquired depth, breadth,
and height, in the same measure as outward discharge was inhibited.”
[Genealogy 2, section 16.]
The same goes, in my view, for the aristocratic State: in the Greek
State (polis) of Athens, for instance, the “soul” of the polity
developed in the dramatic contests, in the dialectical agones
invented by Socrates, etcetera.
[http://groups.yahoo.com/group/human_superhuman/message/71.]
P.S.: The master in times of peace is therefore also repressed/must repress himself: even jousting is already a sublimation (from actual war). Also hunting, for example. And Nietzsche’s theory of the development of the ‘soul’ seems to be mistaken, as such an ‘internalisation’ is not inherited; according to a Lamarckian biology like Nietzsche’s it is, but not according to modern, Darwinian biology. Moreover, masters, too, have a long nurturing phase as infants. Spartan children, for instance, stayed with their mothers until they were 7.
I have no idea why you think P would need to decrease for R=P.
Don’t you think that predators derive pleasure from their kill?
I don’t see that either ‘master’ or ‘slave’ is a useful concept besides denoting a spectrum. Master morality moves away from repression and neurosis, slave morality towards it. Life moving away from repression is sublime of itself, it does not need to be sublimated to produce art.
That was what The Last Man said. You even quoted him on that, and I included that quote in the post you are replying to here!
Anyway, what’s your alternative, then? Hint: “P=R” is a nonsense equation anyway: what is meant is “P+R=R”…
That is beside the point. They do not kill for the sake of pleasure, but for the sake of power. Now the problem is this: pleasure is the feeling of power. But the pleasure principle does not just mean a desire for pleasure, but a desire for the pleasure one had as an infant. The reality principle does not exclude pleasure, but (in principle) only pleasure of a similar magnitude. The reality principle is, from a Nietzschean point of view, the will to power. The will to power is aimed at the feeling of power, it is true, but any feeling of power, no matter how small: that is, the feeling of any increase in power. Thus Nietzsche’s imperative “not contentedness, but more power” (AC 2) is not incompatible with modesty.—Now the pleasure principle is not modest, and can never become modest, according to Freud, because man has been spoiled beyond repair in his early childhood.
The lion is not good enough! One needs to become a child…
How does one ‘move away’ from repression and neurosis?
Also, ‘sublime of itself’? In the context of Freud, this seems to be a mere juggling with terms. But perhaps your answer to my last question will clarify this.
Your equation is impossible, if P and R are values.
P= R simply means that reality is pleasurable.
I do not think either P or R has to diminish for this.
Perhaps I violate Freuds strict meaning. I do not find that his terms are exact, so I have to do this to make them sensible to me.
If you wish to stick to Freuds exact terms, perhaps you could back what you say up with quotes, like you do with Nietzsche? Otherwise I have no way of verifying whether what you say is Freudian. If I (we) can’t do that, the exactness of the approach is not guaranteed.
That is what you say, at least. But I think your logic is flawed:
If everything is will to power, so is the pleasure principle.
And that is my point - I see no necessary difference between the two.
I have no choice but to attribute that to Freuds own psychological makeup.
To Nietzsche. But according to Freuds logic we are necessarily moving away from the child.
By expressing what is repressed.
Granted, that was in part based on word play. But my answer above does clarify what I mean. I do not think art is necessarily neurotic. The music in the video WL posted, yes, that is highly neurotic, repressed energy.
Well, The Last Man indeed put it thus: “Freud’s reality (R) and pleasure (P) principles”. That is, he was being slightly ambiguous. What he must have meant though, I think, is that “R” stands for “the reality principle” and “P” for “the pleasure principle” (not for “reality” and “pleasure”, respectively).
I know Freud almost exclusively through Brown.
I have just defined the difference.
And yes, if everything is will to power… But what you say is like: “is not the pleasure principle itself part of reality?”
That’s what I have done for years. Now however his psychology appeals to me (not in the sense that I like it, though: remember my first reaction to Brown’s book?).
But from the ‘child’?
Ah! Yes, that is what those blond beasts did, isn’t it.
[size=95][T]he same men who are so strongly held bound by custom, honour, habit, thankfulness, even more by mutual suspicion and jealousy inter pares [among equals] and who, by contrast, demonstrate in relation to each other such resourceful consideration, self-control, refinement, loyalty, pride, and friendship—these men, once outside where the strange world, the foreign, begins, are not much better than beasts of prey turned loose. There they enjoy freedom from all social constraints. In the wilderness they make up for the tension which a long fenced-in confinement within the peace of the community brings about. They go back to the innocent consciousness of a wild beast of prey, as joyful monsters, who perhaps walk away from a dreadful sequence of murder, arson, rape, and torture with exhilaration and spiritual equilibrium, as if they had merely pulled off a student prank, convinced that the poets now have something more to sing about and praise for a long time.
[Nietzsche, GM I 11.][/size]
Or is that not healthy either, according to Freud?
But is art necessarily a sublimation? I, for instance, do not think the type of music matters (a reference to your last post in my second attempt at this thread).
Yes, exactly. I see Jungian integration as a possible alternative to Freudian eternal battle of instincts.
I see. I haven’t read much of him either. We’re kind of in the dark, it seems.
Well, now, theoretically this may get through the crack of reasonable doubt, but come on - that’s not necessary. Maybe it was in Nietzsche’s “polis”, from before the advent of total nihilism, people, men, barely hanging on to reason in the horrifyingly metaphysical hypocricy of social and political life. Now, I think that still exists, but not in every western polis. We’ve come a long way, I think, through all the purgatory’s of endless religious debates and the resulting massacres and sacrifices. I do think a lot of the hypocricy is out of us, but with it, also all honor and dignity. We are truly a nihilist mass, with some ups and some downs, but with no purpose. We’re not being directed. I think. Not really. Or just not by men of taste - Ah, I remember that was the conclusion.
That’s what I mean, I though you meant that it was.
Then we seem to have switched positions from a year or so ago (maybe longer).
I think reading Brown makes Freud clearer than reading Freud—though Brown, too, is sometimes inconsistent (this is pointed out in the preface to the second edition, though).
I think that, when one is not usually “strongly held bound by custom, honour, habit, thankfulness, even more by mutual suspicion and jealousy inter pares”, one does not need to express one’s will to pleasure in such an aggressive manner as by “murder, arson, rape, and torture”.
I still do.
Well, even though pent-up rage may, for instance, better be vented by playing (and dancing to) more barbaric music than Supertramp (e.g., Metal), that is still a sublimation. It is essentially the same. We are still not free, still not ‘children’, still not ‘dolphins’, if you see what I mean.
I don’t think I ever was opposed tot he idea of Jungian integration. In the summer of 2008 I was reading, also, about Freud, and his interpretation of the mass-hysteria and euphoric violence of the Viennese mob when Hitler showed up there. I did not think that was any kind of integration, and that neither did Freud. I think our difference of opinion may have been about that.
I’ll have to take your word for that then.
Then why did you ask that question?
I think Metal is extremely sublimated from as well, seen in it’s rhythmic tightness, forced pressed into form. The half-improvised songs of the Doors in concert would be what I perceive as de-sublimating. And in the Moord N Doodslag films, that is exactly what we were, dolphins, children.
If we misunderstand “R” and “P” to mean “reality” and “pleasure”, respectively. I meant the opposite: is not “reality principle” = “pleasure principle” nonsense? For as the word “decrease” implies, that does not mean that they are the same, but that they are equal i.e. equally strong.
Either that, or read Brown yourself. Reading Freud, however, is reading work in progress—almost a thinking-aloud, which does not further clarity.
Because sublimation may not seem neurotic.
Yes, in making those films, I see now you were actually playing. Perhaps in that second verse of your rap that you quoted in the other thread as well. I know play, too, of course. My problem is this:
[size=95]Ananda [bliss] must be mastered manfully, not indulged as a vice in the manner of the Mystic! Samadhi [trance] must be clarified by Sila, by the stern virtue of constraint: and then appears the paradox that the new Law of the Mind has “come not to destroy but to fulfil” the old.
[Crowley, Little Essays, Understanding.][/size]
I think indulging in Ananda ‘as a vice in the manner of the Mystic’ (Jacob Boehme, whom Brown often mentions, comes to mind, among others) is precisely what the pleasure principle is about. But when such ‘Samadhi’, such indulgement, is ‘clarified’ by Sila; when the new Law of the Mind fulfils the old instead of destroying it: then the pleasure principle is sublimated, subordinated to the reality principle, I think. The Dionysian is then subsumed by the Apollinian.
I still see no reason why they should be opposed, regardless of their strength. If Freud states that they necessarily are, I do not agree.
Well of course both rap and film are highly constrained. Just running around in ecstacy doesn’t result in a product. Especially fiction film requires a strong reality principle, because the makers need to organize and deal with real-world things like people, conditions and equipment.
I understand the opposition of the principles in these terms. I remember my attitude as a director interfering with some actor’s pleasure principle. But for me no pleasure could be derived from screwing around, unless it was orchestrated.
Neurosis (or sublimation) is the effect of repression.
In my native country, we have an expression similar in meaning to “blood is thicker than water”, but quite different in form. For it goes: “Blood creeps where it cannot walk.” Now replace “blood” with “the pleasure principle”. Due to the reality principle, the pleasure principle cannot walk freely out in the open. Therefore, it has to creep in underground catacombs etc. It is restricted from actual gratification: therefore it finds substitute gratifications in dreams etc.