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Here's that book I told you about.
I'm gonna watch these Doshin Roshi videos:
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Here's the Edward Bernays reference in my comic.
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I watched both of these videos right after we hung up.
What is your take on what they were saying, and why it's important?
At one point he said something to the effect of "Trump (and other business people) can't see environmental perspective because he lacks the capacity to see the 4th person perspective (system awareness?)."
Is that really saying anything? Seems a bit circular...
I had to look up “shadow work” since they didn’t seem to define it, or give any examples.
Is it safe to says that “the shadow” is the same as Freud’s unconscious, with repression, denial, projection, and so on? Again, they didn’t seem to describe what it is.
I guess it is linguistically economical, when I’m projecting or in denial or repressing my desires or feelings or having resentments and it’s causing my students distress, to say that my students are being disturbed by my shadow (and that there should be an oversight committee).
It seems like a shorthand, but how does it makes things better, in terms of therapy and interpersonal interaction? It seems like there’s no way around getting down to psychopathological brass tacks.
I would be interested in what bit you find particularly illuminating. If you know the time stamp of the good bit, I could check it out.
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Very thoughtful reflection my dear brilliant friend, Jay.
I like things that complement and reinforce my experience of life on life's terms.
Our program is "shadow work" to me which includes coming to realize that without my shadow I don't have the whole picture. So, if I ever take up therapy again I will look for one who understands projection and the alignment of all we do in program with recovery.
F>E>A>R - Face everything and recover.
Sorry I didn't find something new.
But I think, since we are all connected and disconnection is what produces my ISM, that it's good for me to understand our common dilemma and the matrix which produces all our [your brilliance] :-)
I am grateful for psycho-therapy but unless the spiritual element is honored it doesn't seem to help me. I keep trudging the road OF happy destiny.
So............. MWBR
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I found a good video on the shadow.
It seems that Jung’s shadow is quite the same as Freud’s projection from unconscious.
Added to that is the projection of shadow urges onto the anima of a man, for example, in the use of pornography. Which is like Slavoj Žežek’s take that the nature of fantasies is not that we get our desires met, but that we ourselves are the object of the desires of others (who may be faceless, deprived of specific identity). Surprising conclusion, but immediately obvious upon reflection.
ISM? Sorry, I think I know what that means, but forgot.
Anyway, this all comes down to as Wittgenstein put it, “throw away the latter AFTER having climbed it.” The nature of the shadow, or the unconscious, is to HIDE things from ourselves and others, and since it’s a survival mechanism, it works very well.
Jung recommends “introspection” as a therapy for shadow projection.
I would argue that psychotherapy is a spiritual discipline. Otherwise it would be all just take your soma, "a gramme is better than a damn," have some self-hating isolating sex, and get back to work, and you die when your time runs out at 30 or your artificially juiced-up body conks out at 50 or whenever, used up.
We have the twelve steps. The whole point is that our disease is one of denial. But denial is natural, or rather I should say dissociation is, I mean, it is a natural part of the body, just like breathing or digesting or having a heartbeat. Normal people do it all the time.
If we didn't have dissociation, life would be like one big long (Spanish) soap opera where everybody was constantly, and I mean constantly, screaming each other about things that they would otherwise let go by. I could go on for pages and pages about that. Suffice it to say it's a network and complexity and dynamic stability problem. If we're unable to let some things slide, then even social groups of only a couple of people would spiral out of control. I'll spare you that for now (unless you're interested).
However, if there's too much shit stuffed down there, or the kinds of stuff that alcoholics stuff down there (or combat veterans), then things start to break down. That's when projection goes from a natural coping mechanism to destroying one's own life and the lives of others.
I can't say whether it's a question of degree or apples and oranges. Denial, dissociation, and projections are natural, just like crying, sweating, or forming a scab to deal with a cut. They can go to extremes like anything else. Is "going into shock" adaptive or maladaptive? Is it a way in which the body shuts down (like seeing a tunnel of light), or is it a good way in which the body tries to save itself under extreme stress?
Extreme denial, dissociation and projection are not good. The mind does strange things. Are they adaptive, or do they cease to be at some point? I think we feel the answer is yes (in 12-step recovery), and that at some point the person starts to die. Are things like control-freakism, obsessiveness, hyper-vigilance, codependence and so on spin-off illnesses?
So yes, I have a shadow, we all have shadows. I have an unconscious. It's the same as saying I have a human brain. It doesn't seem to add anything. Saying it and not carrying on past that point seems like an abdication of personal responsibility. It's like saying I have blood. I've seen it, and I've also heard lots of explanations about what it does, how it works. But does that mean saying things like "Taarna is a Tarakian. She must fulfill the pact. It is in her blood!"
What does that mean?
To think critically about anything, one must look for extensible and falsifiable statements. Otherwise one is susceptible to false syllogisms and other thinking errors.
1. Taarna is a Tarakian
2. Tarakians fulfill the Pact (it's in their blood)
3. Taarna failed to fulfill the Pact
What can we conclude? Maybe not much.
a. Taarna does not have blood
b. how do we know she didn't fulfill it....?
Anyway, just saying that "Taarna has pact-fulfillment in her blood" might not be very extensible or falsifiable. Likewise, a lot of statements along the lines of "Me and my shadow," or "something, something because my shadow" seem to have a similar problem. If I say that I have torturous flashbacks and constant intrusive thoughts and inner voices and they're destroying my life and driving me to suicide (all of which are symptoms of cPTSD and DID, by the way), saying that it's "because of my shadow" is trivially true, but how does that help? How does that give me any hook or technique or anything that I can use to make it better?
I get what The Shadow is (even beyond that "he knows"), at least I think so. I get what the unconscious is, I get a lot of how it works. I get what dissociation and alters are. I get how all of those things happen. I also believe that the discipline of the 12-steps, inventory, confession, and working with people, works. I believe the most important result of 12-step recovery work is building a relationship with a higher power (or loving parent), but I also believe that the actual work itself is salubritory. Going to live in a monastery and praying and practicing self-denial might achieve the same ends, but maybe not the healing, and maybe the healing is a crucial part of it. The jury's still out for me, but I believe it's the latter one.
Ooops! I said that I believe something! Wash my mouth out with soap! I am a joker, but at least until now I was a respected joker. (sigh).
Anyway, I'm not hearing any useful description of how to do anything about any of this stuff, which strikes me as antithetical to 12-step work. It's all about how, and not about why. Spending all day long on why does not lead to recovery.
I hope you won't accuse me of being unspiritual. I don't believe, obviously, that science and rigor are by their nature unspiritual. If they achieve spiritual aims, then they are by definition spiritual (to my mind, at least). 12-step recovery is all about science and rigor, moreover, and the Big Book of AA is shot through with affirmations of this very fact. It's about honesty, and writing things down the way they are, and taking very specific steps based on findings, among other things.
Being sloppy, dodging the facts, not being rigorous and specific, is antithetic to 12-step work, and I would add, to treatment of any form of serious mental illness. On that note, I have to wait for time to tell, but I've gotten some very interesting results. My 5th-7th step work has been greatly informed by my recent (and I'm not sure you feel about hearing about my macromemetics work) autoimmunomemetic analysis. I have to wait for a few mood cycles, since my moods and the timbre of my inner voice are historically related (note the use of historical scientific data). The results so far are that my "shitty committee" has been shut down nearly completely, and I'm seeing some interesting improvements in how I deal with other people.
I can tell you more if you want, but rather like Freud's unconscious or Jung's shadow, I have been working on theories of how the mind works internally to produce the memetic behaviors which we can observe (perhaps most interesting "bullying behaviors"). I have long posited the existence and form of mechanisms that produce things like denial and projection, but I started thinking about things like DID and cPTSD where the victim is tormented by self-harming thoughts.
Here's the problem: if one is unable to take a critical look at how humans actually behave and how they treat each other (I hesitate to say "why" since that's question-begging), then obviously one can't get useful theories that predict it all. I've done experiments in this area, so I've got some theories, I've got some experimental data, I've got some specific concepts. I've already shared a lot of these ideas with you.
I've long theorized that intergenerational dysfunction (at the family level all the way up to the national level). Obviously it's to do with bullying (which is, of course, a jargon term in macromemetics). I've never really looked at how the individual victim experiences living in the dysfunction. This will, I'm sure, be critical to making a detailed description of how dysfunction is passed on.
I hope it's obvious that a completed theory of all this about family dysfunction, how it's passed on, and how it's experience by the individual, to which could be applied the memetic engineering principles and techniques which I've already developed, would have amazing and far-reaching implications.
Anyway, like I said, I've enjoyed enormous relief so far. I just have to, in the interest of rigor, wait to see if it lasts. I think I've found a way of identifying trauma-induced minimal psychodynamic elements (e.g., specific parental violations of trust), which I can then mourn, and which become a driving cause for current dysfunction, but which I can turn over to my loving parent and also apply "memetic therapy" to. A lot of work in progress, working to put a bow on the theory so that I can hand it off to others.
The goal is, of course, to make a sort of "amateur therapy toolkit" which could inform 4th step work in ACA (maybe even AA, but AA's probably fine, doesn't need much help), and DID and cPTSD work generally. It could also popularize my other memetic engineering discoveries. One would be able to read a few simple descriptions, perhaps some exercises and examples, and start to see real benefits immediately (like I've done over the past few weeks, and I can tell you, I almost feel I can say without fear of exaggeration, that i've never felt better. Life was torture up to now. I started to feel something when we reached step 4, but nothing like this. Anyway, wait and see).
No need for years of specialty work in Jungian analysis and how to do shadow therapy, I hope.
Interesting point how in the video points to network video as a vehicle for indulging the shadow.
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I just read a great quote at the start of July 18's SMR:
Stored Trauma
"Clinical research strongly suggests that childhood trauma or neglect are stored in the tissue of the children. The emotional or physical trauma does not go away without an effort to address the original cause." BRB Page 17
"It's in your bones" they might have said. "There's something the matter with the whole family." These statements only beg the question that often gets overlooked, "Why?"
I'm always on alert for use of "beg the question" since it's usually misused. Here I think it's right, though (yay, ACA!). To beggar a question is to implicitly answer it within the question itself, kind of along the lines of "have you stopped beating your wife yet?" It's dishonest.
I feel the same about statements like "it's my shadow," or "it's a Q conspiracy". If there's nothing after that, no way to check it, no way to work on it, then it doesn't help.
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