There is lots of thoughtful input in this thread and I'd like to pull a few bits together because we have been doing quite a bit of discussing here; it's interesting how some of our discussions then get mirrored in something that someone else posts on that very day!
Note what Gimpy wrote here:
Gimpy said:
My folks are a couple of very wounded, dysfunctional people. I can't spend more than a week in their company without 'catching a mental cold'. That doesn't mean they are evil monsters. The truth is they're no better or worse than the majority of the public. Its a question of what can I, as a person, deal with, without falling into similar patterns of dysfunction?
Awareness is one of the keys. What are the limits of your awareness? Where do you hit your nose on a wall? Where does your brain 'shut off'? Answering those questions is a start. Once that's done, its possible to look at someone else and watch...and learn whether or not they are aware....and over time see if its surface awareness, or deeper than that.
Summing it up in a sentence is hard, but I heard this once and it stuck: "I love you, but I don't like you sometimes, and I can't live with you."
External Considering doesn't mean that you have to force yourself to live in miserable situations. As Gurdjieff pointed out, it is having a wide and deep knowledge of psychology so you can do what makes life easier for others AND YOURSELF. Gimpy has just described this. You don't have to hate people or assume that they are necessarily sick or defective in their own context. Some people are just asleep and have no possibility of waking up and we have to acknowledge that. And then we have to decide what is our proper response.
In cases where the individuals are simple, basically good-hearted people, (they can be family or friends) then we have to realize that they are not going to wake up, and just get along with them as best we can and try to be pleasant and attentive when we are in their presence. Different people have differing capacities to do this for different reasons: temperament, their own wounds in process of healing, and so on.
In cases where the individuals you have to deal with show signs of pathology (which can exist along a spectrum) which usually amounts to their own projective identification, then the problem of what to do takes on a bit more urgency.
As you know, projective identification is a process whereby parts of the ego are thought of as forced into another person who is then expected to become identified with whatever has been projected. The projector strives to find in the other, or to induce the other to become, the very embodiment of projection. In short, the other person tries to mold you (or anyone) into their image of what you should be. The problems come to the fore with the "inducing in the other" the embodiment of the projection.
Wikipedia gives a bit more on this:
Projective identification differs from simple projection in that projective identification can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, whereby a person, believing something false about another, relates to that other person in such a way that the other person alters their behavior to make the belief true. The second person is influenced by the projection and begins to behave as though he or she is in fact actually characterized by the projected thoughts or beliefs, a process that may happen outside the awareness of both parties involved.
The recipient of the projection can suffer a temporary loss of insight, a sense of experiencing strong feelings of being manipulated so as to be playing a part, no matter how difficult to recognise, in somebody else's phantasy. One therapist, for example, describes how "I felt the progressive extrusion of his internalised mother into me, not as a theoretical construct but in actual experience. The intonation of my voice altered, became higher with the distinctly Ur-mutter quality."
In everyday life, it can happen that the recipient feels almost kidnapped or coerced into carrying out the unconscious phantasy of the projector. In extreme cases, the recipient can lose any sense of self - to become inhuman, a moving bag of skin, with important symbolic messages rattling about inside - and may find themselves acting out in attempts at self-exorcism; the attempt to rid the self of projections or possession.
...
An example of projective identification is that of the paranoid schizophrenic who develops the delusion that he is being persecuted by the police; fearing the police, he begins to act furtively and anxiously around police officers, thereby raising the suspicions of police officers, who then begin to look for some grounds on which to arrest him. In such instances, they unknowingly project bits of their parents in their negative, punishing, powerful aspect on to the police...the family policeman in their heads.
What is projected most often is an intolerable, painful, or dangerous idea or belief about the self that the projecting person cannot accept (i.e. "I have behaved wrongly" or "I have a sexual feeling towards ..." ). Or it may be a valued or esteemed idea that again is difficult for the projecting person to acknowledge. Projective identification is believed to be a very early or primitive psychological process and is understood to be one of the more primitive defense mechanisms. Yet it is also thought to be the basis of more mature psychological processes like empathy and intuition.
So, in the above description of projective identification, we find splitting and internal considering writ rather large. But still, they are good examples because they are so exaggerated that we can get the taste of them so as to be able to catch the smaller and milder versions in our daily lives.
But more importantly, when we interact with persons who insist in projecting onto us their own beliefs about us, whether they project that we are a saint or a sinner, and this process PERSISTS, then there is a problem and you have to figure out what to do: can you distance yourself or do you just have to walk away?
Interestingly, the people who may tend to project great sanctity on another person can, in an instant, flip and see that person as all evil. As long as the projectee (coining a term here) makes the projector feel good, all is well. But the instant the projectee does or says something that makes the projector feel bad, then everything about the projectee is reinterpreted and that person goes in the trash as all bad.
I've certainly experienced this often enough which is one of the reasons I tend to strongly discourage people who come on the forum with that worshipful attitude. It's okay to acknowledge my labors for others, but don't start that guru schtick.
So, there's that. Next item with my comments in blue text:
Carlise said:
I never really understood what was meant by "Black and white thinking" until reading this thread. For the longest time I've considered it something I rarely ever fall into, but it's clear now that this is a total lie!
This is something that has actually been the bane of my life for the longest time, and I could just never put my finger on it. I have observed vertical splitting in nearly every relationship I've ever been in, every friendship, and of course my relations with parents. The thing is, I wouldn't call it black and white thinking, it's more like black and white feeling, i.e. runaway horses.
It's something I've learned to deal with over time. I'll be in a situation where someone isn't conforming to my internal expectations at that given moment. E.g. I'm feeling serious and a person is being silly (or vice versa), this feeling can become a judgement on their whole character. Or somebody turns up late for a planned event, and suddenly I see their entire being as lazy and incompetent. {Excellent examples of splitting/internal considering. Also notice that it is due to "projective identification" though this is just the everyday garden variety.}
When I say "I", I mean that immature, narcissistic part of the emotional center. My intellectual center sits on top of all this, and tries its best to keep a lid on the situation. In fact this center is very well developed, very balanced and reasonable. The problem is, it really struggles to control the crazy emotional center, and no amount of cold, rational thought can actually make me feel any different. {This is the part that makes you act civilly, lie to people about how you are feeling, and then you plan your escape.}
It takes a serious timeout, relaxation, pipe breathing etc. to get back into that state of being able to truly see and feel the balanced nuances of people and situations. Then I look back on myself in a given situation, and feel rather guilty and confused that I could have acted so stupidly.
{The problem here is that the chemicals of the emotions that were evoked during the "episode" haven't been metabolized. And in most life situations, can't be. If you have someone available that you can vent to, having a little objective rant, gets it out so that it doesn't affect your health and doesn't build up a backlog. Just because you are able to reestablish your calm state, doesn't mean you've brought the program to the surface and run it off the track! But this has to be done safely and with awareness. If done correctly, you are able to metabolize, little by little, the old stuff that is part of the program formation. Keep in mind this isn't just allowing yourself to get angry and express it. It is a process of expressing what is lurking inside in a controlled drama so you can LOOK AT IT.}
In other words, I really don't deal well with 'friction' in the moment, particularly emotional friction, but through recapitulation I'm able to gain some insight into what is happening. The idea of using these signs as an alarm clock appeals to me. Today I will be trying to put this into action and remember myself throughout a situation that 'it' doesn't like.
Here you have a good example of the ordinary, everyday, projective identification as described above. I placed in bold the key element in the last paragraph:
I really don't deal well with 'friction' in the moment, particularly emotional friction.
What is being said is: "I don't like to feel bad and when I do feel bad, it changes how I view everything."
True for about everyone. But, as I mentioned earlier in the thread, the whole point of working on the self is to get to the point where you are not controlled by your negative emotions at all and that means that you have to bring them up, acknowledge them, look at them, understand their silliness and pettiness and that they really are childish because they are being generated by old programs of fear and anger at not being able to express yourself.
If nothing else, you can pace back and forth in a private space and just rant and dramatize, and make it as outrageous as possible.
I tell you one that I have done a few times and it is pretty effective. One of my kids would say or do something that hurt me. Well, since we have this working relationship, I would "put on the drama" which amounted to me speaking the lines from a Bill Cosby comedy routine. "I didn't carry you in my womb for 9 months to have you speak to me like that!" And of course, I would put on the cry face, quiver the lip, say a few "boo hoo hoos". The kids would join in with the lines from the same routine: "you know what is wrong with kids these days? BRAIN DAMAGE!" Then we may end up in a multiple part drama where someone else chimes in and says: "You were mean to me yesterday and I spent the whole night thinking about eating worms and dying only I couldn't think of the best way to prepare them so, as you see, I'm still alive and worm free this morning." "How was I mean to you?" "Remember when you said blah blah? It reminded me of when my mother used to say blah blah... It really hurt my feelings though I know you didn't mean it that way."
Yes, the process can get quite noisy and dramatic and emotional. Emotion gets expressed, programs get acknowledged, humor is brought in to make it less threatening to do so, and at the end, everybody understands everybody else.
In short, instead of feeling hurt and splitting and going off into internal considering, we try to deal with such things as close to in the moment as possible, not take ourselves too seriously, but still "throw the wolf a piece of meat." The emotions are there, the programs are there, the tendencies are there, and it is self-damaging to not realize this and find a way to deal with it without suppressing or repressing. In other words, it is a process of knowing the machine, observing the machine, and operating it from a position of being master, not slave.
Next:
Mariama said:
TBH, I haven't read the whole thread yet, but a large part of it. I just wanted to respond to you, happyliza, because you mentioned introspection. If I remember correctly: Timothy Wilson writes in 'The Adaptive Unconscious' that introspection isn't as good as we think it is. What does help is a network. He also speaks of inference which is another way of looking at our behaviour through the eyes of others. The way people respond to us tells us something about us, which is more objective than introspection. (Hope I am correct here. :D)
Exactly. See my example above. You can't go into introspection because that is usually Internal Considering or Patching Up, or active suppression. Body work is good, too, especially if it is deep and you can do some yelling and groaning in the process. Hypnosis? Too much like introspection on steriods. Of course, if you can go back to initial traumas and express them with the anger or fear or hurt you felt at the time, and the therapist is trained to help you do this, then that can be useful.
Muxel said:
GqSoul said:
The noted persistence of the "illusion of validity" that we maintain, and the vehemence with which we defend it, seems to depend on where we are on the spectrum of psychological health.
{Indeed. Persistence and defense that is a long-standing, immutable pattern of behavior defines a personality disorder. }
Chp 65: The Way of the Fool said:
The second stage, or circuit, the famous “anal phase,” is concerned with keeping or letting go of experiences in interactions with others. This second circuit determines how an individual will expand their identity to include others. The drive of the second phase is to interact with other selves. It is this drive that either brings about the congregation of groups, or results in paranoid withdrawal from anyone who is different. Trauma in the formation of this circuit (generally from 12 months to 24 months) can result in a lack of social feeling, a tendency to manipulate and exploit others for one’s own gain, and cruelty to others, whether conscious or unconscious. This is generally a result of a feeling of non-acceptance, that one is missing out on something that others have, the need for approval from others and basic lack of self-esteem.
...
Now, I want you to keep in mind the idea that an infant “shows a strong desire to participate in a world of others. Eventually his willingness for self-modification, necessary to win rapport with his world, is stronger than his desire for autonomy.” It is very important, and we will come back to it.
Those with strong positive second circuits imprints are able to feel for others in terms of a sense of concern or identity by association. They are willing to reach out and acknowledge the being of another.
However, due to the most common imprinting of our society, which is negative, most of this reaching out is in the context of territory, which involves emotional con games, pecking order, rituals of domination or submission. It has been noted that a lot of people with negative second circuit imprinting can be found in military or hierarchical organizations where there is constant striving to please someone in order to maintain or rise in status. {Notice also that this is related to Projective Identification.}
... This circuit is also very often referred to as the ego because it mistakes itself for the whole self.
Unholy Hungers said:
Once again, we touch the positive Great Feminine whenever we feel safe in the world, whenever we feel accepted and appreciated just as we are.
So I'm thinking that a benevolent second circuit a.k.a. trust in the universe would be the source of one's will to overcome splitting. And those who just can't do it, or find it difficult for some reason, have to mend their second circuit and "touch the positive Great Feminine." (Or maybe healing the second circuit and overcoming splitting are intertwined with each other.) We need a healthy and realistic self-esteem, and we need to dig up our "subconscious beliefs"
The above is striking to me because this is one of the things we were talking about in the house here on the very day this post was made. In particular, we were discussing it in relation to the ideas of vertical and horizontal splitting.
obyvatel said:
My understanding of vertical splitting is that it is like two or more "I's" with largely incompatible attitudes existing side by side without being consciously aware of each other. An extreme form of vertical splitting would be a case of MPD (multiple personality disorder). Vertical splitting is like two or more windows open on the computer screen running different programs.
Horizontal splitting could indicate a repressed layer which activates a particular "I" having certain fixed attitudes and characteristics in response to certain situations. It is like the code that launches a program window in the computer screen. A more appropriate image could be that of an island which has mountains and rivers and lush green valleys on its surface (vertical split) while in the portion under the water, it could be a dormant volcano (horizontal split). This is my current understanding which may or may not be accurate.
Since splitting seems to be tied to the instinctive substratum, it is most likely connected with the neuroception process. The brain acts on the neural image provided to it by the 5 exterior sense organs and through the interoception process called the "6th" sense organ by Porges which provides information about the internal state of the body. When this neuroception process is faulty, it presents an image of the environment/situation to the brain which is incompatible with the real situation at hand. The brain starts running with this image creating narratives and generating responses inappropriate to the real situation. If this view of the process is accurate, then there should be a sensation arising out of the neuroception process in the background of all the emotions, narratives, and even what can appear as logical thinking but wrongly applied to a faulty premise.
A couple of things come to mind from Lobaczewski: 1) selection and substitution and 2) schizoidal psychopathy which can be more or less severe along an entire spectrum.
The only way to understand selection and substitution in the garden variety form is to place it in the social context. Lobaczewski writes:
During good times, people progressively lose sight of the need for profound reflection, introspection, knowledge of others, and an understanding of life’s complicated laws. Is it worth pondering the properties of human nature and man’s flawed personality, whether one’s own or someone else’s? Can we understand the creative meaning of suffering we have not undergone ourselves, instead of taking the easy way out and blaming the victim? Any excess mental effort seems like pointless labor if life’s joys appear to be available for the taking. A clever, liberal, and merry individual is a good sport; a more farsighted person predicting dire results becomes a wet-blanket killjoy.
Perception of the truth about the real environment, especially an understanding of the human personality and its values, ceases to be a virtue during the so-called “happy” times; thoughtful doubters are decried as meddlers who cannot leave well enough alone. This leads to an impoverishment of psychological knowledge, the capacity of differentiating the properties of human nature and personality, and the ability to mold minds creatively. The cult of power thus supplants those mental values so essential for maintaining law and order by peaceful means. A nation’s enrichment or involution regarding its psychological world-view could be considered an indicator of whether its future will be good or bad.
During “good” times, the search for truth becomes uncomfortable because it reveals inconvenient factors. It is better to think about easier and more pleasant things.
Unconscious elimination of data which are or appear to be inexpedient gradually turns to habit, then becomes a custom accepted by society at large. Any thought process based on such truncated information cannot possibly give rise to correct conclusions; it further leads to subconscious substitution of inconvenient premises by more convenient ones, thereby approaching the boundaries of phenomena which should be viewed as psychopathological.
...Such a society, already infected by the hysteroidal state, considers any perception of uncomfortable truth to be a sign of “ill-breeding”. ... Telling the truth becomes immoral.
Now, bring that description down to person's home life, the attitudes of their family and peers, and you can easily see how habits of mind are inculcated. If a person is brought up in a family where "any perception of uncomfortable truth [is] a sign of ill-breeding," that is gonna be one heck of a program to overcome. Negative emotions are "bad" and expressing them is even worse. You must, at all costs, hide or suppress them.
Lobaczewski write:
Information selection and substitution: ... Unconscious psychological processes outstrip conscious reasoning, both in time and in scope, which makes many psychological phenomena possible: including those generally described as conversive, such as subconscious blocking out of conclusions, the selection, and, also, substitution of seemingly uncomfortable premises.
We speak of blocking out conclusions if the inferential process was proper in principle and has almost arrived at a conclusion and final comprehension within the act of internal projection, but becomes stymied by a preceding directive from the subconscious, which considered it inexpedient or disturbing.
This is primitive prevention of personality disintegration, which may seem advantageous; however, it also prevents all the advantages which could be derived from consciously elaborated conclusion and reintegration. A conclusion thus rejected remains in our subconscious and in a more unconscious way causes the next blocking and selection of this kind. This can be totally harmful, progressively enslaving a person to his own subconscious, and is often accompanied by a feeling of tension and bitterness.
We speak of selection of premises whenever the feedback goes deeper into the resulting reasoning and from its database thus deletes and represses into the subconscious just that piece of information which was responsible for arriving at the uncomfortable conclusion. Our subconscious then permits further logical reasoning, except that the outcome will be erroneous in direct proportion to the actual significance of the repressed data.
An ever-greater number of such repressed information is collected in our subconscious memory. Finally, a kind of habit seems to take over: similar material is treated the same way even if reasoning would have reached an outcome quite advantageous to the person.
The most complex process of this type is substitution of premises thus eliminated by other data, ensuring an ostensibly more comfortable conclusion. Our associative ability rapidly elaborates a new item to replace the removed one, but it is one leading to a comfortable conclusion. This operation takes the most time, and it is unlikely to be exclusively subconscious.
This is the process by which emotional energy - which cannot be destroyed - begins to run the intellect. Thus, a subconscious habit of automatic repression begins and subconscious selection and substitution of data begins, leading to chronic avoidance of the crux of the matter. This is the process of creating narratives to explain our unconscious motivations. The problem here is that, the smarter a person is, the better they are at elaborating whatever is needed to come to the "comfortable conclusion."
Lobaczewski then writes:
The emotionalism dominating individual, collective and political life, as well as the subconscious selection and substitution of data in reasoning, are impoverishing the development of a psychological world-view and leading to individual and national egotism. The mania for taking offense at the drop of a hat provokes constant retaliation, taking advantage of hyper-irritability and hypo-criticality on the part of others.
Again, scale this down to the individual and what you see is that
repressed emotions which drive the subconscious selection and substitution
are the substructure of an ego that is terrified all the time. This terror of the blocked contents of the subconscious leaves a person prickly and always on the lookout for some offense that can shore up their internal negative view of the world. Thus, projective identification, splitting, internal considering, etc are all intertwined in these types of processes.
This takes us back to Second Circuit imprinting and what GqSoul noted above that struck me as so insightful a connetion:
GqSoul said:
The noted persistence of the "illusion of validity" that we maintain, and the vehemence with which we defend it, seems to depend on where we are on the spectrum of psychological health.
<snip>
So I'm thinking that a benevolent second circuit a.k.a. trust in the universe would be the source of one's will to overcome splitting. And those who just can't do it, or find it difficult for some reason, have to mend their second circuit and "touch the positive Great Feminine." (Or maybe healing the second circuit and overcoming splitting are intertwined with each other.) We need a healthy and realistic self-esteem, and we need to dig up our "subconscious beliefs"
I suspect that fixing the Second Circuit isn't easy if it is possible at all. Because of some of the similarities to splitting that are included by Lobaczewski in the description of the schizoidal psychopath, we were re-reading that material here and one of us here pointed out the following bit: "
several varieties of this anomaly, whose existence can be attributed either to changes in the genetic factor or to
differences in other individual characteristics of a non-pathological nature."
In other words, the BEHAVIOR of what would be labeled a schizoidal psychopath extends along a spectrum both in terms of traits and causes. As we've been discussing above, a person can behave more or less schizoidally or psychopathically for any number of reasons. But the question right now is: what about the people who just can't go there? Those whose "persistence of the "illusion of validity"" is accompanied by vehement defense of same? Can we look inside and see what is going on?
So, let's look at this schizoidal psychopath:
**Carriers of this anomaly are hypersensitive and distrustful
{Suppressed and repressed negative emotions due to selection and substitution}
**but they pay little attention to the feelings of others
{probably because they are so busy engaging in projective identification.}
**tend to assume extreme positions, and are eager to retaliate for minor offenses.
{the substructure of an ego that is terrified all the time}
**Sometimes they are eccentric and odd.
{"When this neuroception process is faulty, it presents an image of the environment/situation to the brain which is incompatible with the real situation at hand. }
**Their poor sense of psychological situation and reality leads them to superimpose erroneous, pejorative interpretations upon other people’s intentions.
{"The brain starts running with this image creating narratives and generating responses inappropriate to the real situation. ...what can appear as logical thinking but wrongly applied to a faulty premise."}
**They easy become involved in activities which are ostensibly moral, but which actually inflict damage upon themselves and others.
{This is easy to understand based on the above. It's this kind of thinking that leads people to harm others for the sake of an idea or an ideology with which they have identified and through selection and substitution have validated in their minds as good, and those who do not meet this subjective criteria are "bad".}
**Their impoverished psychological worldview makes them typically pessimistic regarding human nature.
{This is interesting because it smacks of the Authoritarian Follower type of personality. What is clear to me is that Authoritarian personality types do not necessarily have to follow the "constituted authorities" i.e. the PTB. They can also select an authority to follow who makes them "feel good" if they are a misfit in the world of the majority of authoritarian followers. The main characteristic of this personality is "submission to the authority" they have selected AND aggression directed against others in the name of that authority who do not adhere to the conventions endorsed by that authority.}
**They embitter other people’s lives
{Obvious from what is described above.}
**When they become wrapped up in situations of serious stress, however, the schizoid’s failings cause them to collapse easily. The capacity for thought is thereupon characteristically stifled, and frequently the schizoids fall into reactive psychotic states so similar in appearance to schizophrenia that they lead to misdiagnoses.
{This is the part that is interesting and is probably the cut between those that can be fixed and those that cannot. Collapsing and being unable to think clearly is one thing, going psychotic is another. This needs looking at more carefully, I think. Obviously, anybody can split and go off into internal considering, but when it goes to this extreme - and we've certainly seen it a time or two - then we are forced to consider that the person really does have some sort of defective substratum.}
**The common factor in the varieties of this anomaly is a dull, pale emotions and a dulled feeling for the psychological realities. This can be attributed to the incomplete quality of the instinctive substratum, which is working as though on sand.
{This could be second circuit imprinting leading to habits of mind/thought, OR it could be a genetically defective substratum. It's not so easy to tell unless and until the person collapses as described above and frankly, I'm not that interested in pushing a person to collapse just to find out! Of course, it happens spontaneously in some relationship dynamics.}
**Low emotional pressure enables them to develop proper speculative reasoning but because of their one-sidedness, they tend to consider themselves intellectually superior to “ordinary” people.
{This, too, is interesting. It's like the Dunning-Kruger effect. However, I have seen people who are very, very bright and clever: they have some pretty efficient software in their brains. BUT, when the emotional pressure comes into the picture, it's like their operating system is unable to run the program because there is a virus that takes up a huge amount of resources - the virus of Splitting/internal considering.}
In the end, I think GqSoul's citation from Unholy Hungers is the key:
Unholy Hungers said:
Once again, we touch the positive Great Feminine whenever we feel safe in the world, whenever we feel accepted and appreciated just as we are.
