The Social Basis of Consciousness

Chapter I 9

PSYCHOANALYSIS IN THEORY AND IN LIFE

Theory of psychoanalysis rests upon conception that nervous disorders are substitutive manifestation of repressed sexual life--Sexuality itself, however, as now existing, symptomatic of repression and quite preclusive of the organic instinct of sex--Popular analytic view places a premium upon the reaction embodied in normality but substitution and repression in this collective reaction identical with the unconscious of neurotic individuals--Substitution of self-image for reality, present in reactions of normal, is not as yet recognized by psychoanalysis--Psychoanalysis remains in so far a theory only--In truth, the neurotic personality is index of the urge toward an essential organic mode of consciousness--Continuity with organic processes registered as subjective feeling cannot be approached by objective methods--The insanity of the individual not to be cured as long as there is the insanity of the social mind about him.

Chapter Ii 32

A RELATIVE CONCEPT OF CONSCIOUSNESS: AN ANALYSIS OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN ITS ETHNIC ORIGIN

The Newtonian system assumes an unqualified absolute and fails to take account of factors operating within the larger system in which it is itself an element--In the sphere of psychic phenomena a similar system of absolutism dominates our presumably conscious world--Analysis of our judgments reveals the assumption that the position intrinsic to the observer is all-inclusive and authentic--But our world of impressions is artificial and reflects the artificial systematization that fails to include our own organisms--This autocratic interpretation of life is based on a bidimensional or image system which in its arbitrary and personal evaluation distorts the universe of reality--Normality is consensus comprising the personal absolute vested in the unconscious of the collective mind--Need to replace pictorial mode by organic coalescence in common affectivity--Personal systems of men, single and collective, are but relative with respect to an organic societal consciousness--Concept of relativity of consciousness abrogates absolute standard and embraces dimensional element of the system, individual and social, of which we ourselves are a component part--Transition from bidimensional (contemplation of aspect) to tridimensional (participation in function) affords basis for measuring deflections of personality, socially as well as individually.

Chapter Iii 50

THE ORIGIN OF OUR INDIVIDUAL UNCONSCIOUS

Organic societal consciousness can be comprehended only through subjective identification with it--Discussion of the tridimensional reality of human consciousness with its three determinants--Present phase of consciousness admits only the bidimensional image--The position of the bidimensional elements “right and wrong” as incorporated in the life of the child--Advantage of the parent the real motive underlying this moral bidimension--Long-continued experiments with personal mood reactions as substantiation of view that induced image of right and wrong is at the root of human psychopathology--Non-inclusiveness of others is meaning of unconsciousness, individual and social--Present social adaptation is merely collective response, not societal extension of consciousness--Substitution of the absolute of personal interest for inclusive participation as relative elements affords no basis for inclusion of larger whole in which the individual is a contributing element.

Chapter Iv 63

THE UNCONSCIOUS FACTOR WITHIN THE SOCIAL SYSTEM

Daily reactions betray state of anxiety in the social mind--These anxieties, sponsored in earlier times by medical and religious fetish, still substantiated by the systems of medicine and religion--Organic analysis of the element of social authority--The systems of psychoanalysis and the Roman Church as paradigms--Factor of resistance in psychoanalysis analogous to factor of doubt in religion--The systematization comprising the social corporation of individuals as much an aspect of the unconscious autocracy of the personal absolute as the systematization of the individual--In the conflict between these two mutually opposed absolutes (socially systematized authority and the resistance of the individual) there is an organic impasse.

Chapter V 78

SOCIOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS FROM A VIEWPOINT OF RELATIVITY

The established system demands conformity to its prescribed norm--The limitation of life to a bidimensional alternative of one’s own pleasure or one’s own pain results in division of personality and in compulsion neurosis involving the entire social consciousness--Bidimensional replacements in social system found in art, science, education, marriage, etc.--The mood alternations of the individual are but obverse aspects of the same bidimensional portrait of personal advantage--This element of unconscious alternation bars unbiased observation of the personal absolute--In the field of preventive medicine the personal cure of the individual subordinated to safeguarding of community health--But within the subjective sphere there is resistance to an approach that would consider the individual’s position as part of a societal unity because such an approach would menace the illusion of personal prerogative--Psychopathologists equally involved unconsciously in the social neurosis--In an objective study of the neurosis the psychopathologist escapes the subjective acknowledgment of its presence within himself--Possibility of fundamental readjustment for dissociated personality lies only in surrender socially of bidimensional or pictorial illusion in favour of tridimensional actuality.

PART II. The Psychology of the Neuroses

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE NEUROSES

Chapter I 107

ANALYSIS OF FREUD’S DYNAMIC AND INDIVIDUALISTIC CONCEPTION OF THE NEUROSES

Freud’s theory assumes breach in integrity of consciousness due to effort of delimited area to establish itself as a separate self-governing unit--Distinction of Freud’s work lies in conception of central totality of consciousness; limitation of Freud’s work consists in assigning totality of consciousness to single individual--Conception of totality of personality tenable only from point of view of inclusive societal consciousness.

Chapter Ii 114

FORMULATION OF AN ORGANIC OR SOCIETAL BASIS OF INTERPRETATION

The mental life of the infant organism is wholly subjective and is one with the organism’s inherent feeling--With entrance of the ulterior motive appearing in the command and prohibition of the parent there is the issue of personal gain or loss (suggestion and repression)--Appearance of self-consciousness and self-interest forces interruption of the organism’s societal life and a separation from its basic continuum--Maintenance of separativeness of individual destroys organic integrity--There is need to stand apart from self and view it as element within the larger organism of mankind--Instinct of tribal preservation and not self-preservation is the dominant urge among us.

Chapter Iii 134

THE ORGANIC SIGNIFICANCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS

Development of the idea of the parallel between individual and phyletic trends in unconscious manifestations--Unconscious worship of self-image source of suggestion and repression--Because of this self-image what man assumes to be cerebration is fictitious brain-state withdrawn from continuity with organic life--Where there is individual lesion, separation among elements is followed by pain and recourse to remedial aids, i.e. the organism as a whole demands relief--In the organic societal whole the individual as separated element is source of lesion but seeks to escape through symbolic disguise the pain of his societal separation--Conflict is between part and whole wherein individual is embodiment of both.

Chapter Iv 154

ORGANIC ANALYSIS OF REPRESSION AND OF THE FACTOR OF RESISTANCE FROM THE SOCIETAL VIEWPOINT

The resolution of repression or resistance is regarded by Freud as the essential problem of psychoanalysis--Neurosis, according to Freud, is life’s repression of sexuality--According to an organismic attitude repression and sexuality are concomitant and are equally the results in the individual of organic disunity and interruption of function--The biology of resistance is found in the breach in individual’s continuity with life as confluent, organic whole--Health or disease, psychologically or physiologically, depends upon whether the cell functions integrally or separatively, congruently or resistantly--In social fabric each element is against each--In our unconsciousness we deny the reality of this biological phylum embodied in our organic consciousness and underlying the processes of our individual mentation--Sexuality, currently confused with sex, is egoistic, infantile expression and antithesis of organic expression of sex--Only continuity of the confluent subjective sphere can make possible an analysis that will synthesize the scattered elements of personality.

Chapter V 165

ORGANIC ANALYSIS OF REPRESSION AND OF THE FACTOR OF RESISTANCE FROM THE INDIVIDUAL VIEWPOINT

Transference is an unconscious condition which involves as much the analyst as the analysand--Resistance and repression are the factors in this mutual situation--Under present personalistic procedure in psychoanalysis the analyst deals objectively with an inherently subjective situation--He regards only the disparity of the patient and so preserves the apparent differentiation which is the underlying cause of the patient’s disorder--There is a confusion in psychoanalysis due to the failure to discriminate between the mother-image and the mother-organism--The analyst, being socially dissociated, seeks to reinstate the comfort of his own childhood through an unconscious self-interested response (pleasure or displeasure) to the analysand--The transference which is thus introduced by the unconscious attitude of the analyst cannot be analyzed because of the analyst’s own involvement--This is the impasse of the individualistic analysis--From a societal viewpoint the analyst can be interested only in the patient’s delusion of separateness and will direct his endeavour to an understanding of the social repression which dissociates them both from the common, generic consciousness.

Chapter Vi 177

THE DREAM AND ITS ANALYSIS IN AN ORGANISMIC INTERPRETATION OF THE NEUROSES

To analyze the dream from a basis that is equally separative and repressed is to exchange the symbols of the individual’s repression for analogous symbols of the social repression--The night’s reaction, being individual, and the day’s reaction, being social, both represent an endeavour to adjust vicariously man’s societal disunity--The affective or subjective life cannot be adjusted through the study of the objective mechanisms that merely reflect it but only through the subjective (conscious) reabsorption within us of the affects to whose suggestion the dream is the mirrored reaction--The drama and the dream are identical in mechanism--An organic mode of consciousness can regard with equally objective clarity the vicarious processes of the day and of the night.

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