to commit ourselves to the process. We have to hold the tension that comes with a dual existence, no matter what. If this sounds true, then “Say yes quickly!” urges the poet Rumi. “Inside you there’s an artist you don’t know about.”
I nside you there’s an artist you don’t know about? If this rings true then it is likely that you are interested in that other vast field of uncertainty—depth psychology.
Enter Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) and Carl Jung (1875–1961), two courageous twentieth-century pioneers of depth psychology, both of them drawn to clinical medicine and healing, both of them turning the telescope inward in their attempts to comprehend the dynamics of human nature. Between them, what they saw and how they articulated it serves as the fifth great wake-up call of the past six hundred years. It was a dual contribution, one from a mentor and the other from a disciple who would inevitably go his own way. Between them, they tried to make sense of another space, another great wilderness—the human psyche.
Freud, who coined the term psychoanalysis , gave us the words ego , superego , and id to describe his tripartite division of the human personality. The id, a word and suffix first used by German biologist G. Weismann in 1893 to describe a unit of germplasm, was borrowed by Freud to describe the uncultured, instinctual impulses of human behavior. He was referring to our brain stem–oriented animal nature. He described the ego as that part of the human psyche that corresponds most closely to one’s autobiographical self—a controlling self that holds back the impulsiveness of the id in an effort to delay grati-fication until it can be found or expressed in socially approved ways. This was another way of describing the dialogue, or tension, between the inhibitory frontal lobe and the brain stem demands for immediate gratification. The superego, he said, was that part of the personality that corresponds to the notion of conscience, the part that controls and censors one’s behavior through learned moral and social values. The pull of the superego is much more toward one’s culture and conventional wisdom than to one’s biology. Freud was well aware of this, for he recognized in this tension the seeds of human neuroses. He proposed that the neuroses of civilized men and women resulted from the alienation of our egos (including the superego) from our primal, animal drives. In other words, we ignore our biological origins at great cost to our mental health. He was describing the consequences of the Human-Nature split.
In his analysis of human behavior, however, Freud went deeper than the ego. Putting his credibility at stake, he became the recognized spokesperson for that potentially fathomable realm of the human psyche—the unconscious. He saw it as the home of hidden agendas, the domain of repressed personal memories, motivations, and wishes, the reservoir from which our dreams and fantasies originate, as well as the source of what came to be known as Freudian slips. These are those memorable words or intentions that we deliberately try to suppress but that, in certain social settings, we inexplicably and embarrassingly let slip or act out.
In support of what he believed was the universality of the role of the unconscious mind in human behavior, Freud turned to mythology.His famous analysis of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex led the way to a plausible yet controversial theory of human psychosexual development. Drawing on an aspect of the famous Greek myth in which the hero unwittingly murders his father and marries his mother, he coined the now famous Oedipus complex to describe the unconscious sexual attachment of infants to parents of the opposite sex. He dared to propose that all infants relive the theme of this ancient myth in that they subconsciously wish for the murder or death of the parent/competitor of the same sex in order to have the other all to themselves. It is easy, steeped as we are in
I nside you there’s an artist you don’t know about? If this rings true then it is likely that you are interested in that other vast field of uncertainty—depth psychology.
Enter Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) and Carl Jung (1875–1961), two courageous twentieth-century pioneers of depth psychology, both of them drawn to clinical medicine and healing, both of them turning the telescope inward in their attempts to comprehend the dynamics of human nature. Between them, what they saw and how they articulated it serves as the fifth great wake-up call of the past six hundred years. It was a dual contribution, one from a mentor and the other from a disciple who would inevitably go his own way. Between them, they tried to make sense of another space, another great wilderness—the human psyche.
Freud, who coined the term psychoanalysis , gave us the words ego , superego , and id to describe his tripartite division of the human personality. The id, a word and suffix first used by German biologist G. Weismann in 1893 to describe a unit of germplasm, was borrowed by Freud to describe the uncultured, instinctual impulses of human behavior. He was referring to our brain stem–oriented animal nature. He described the ego as that part of the human psyche that corresponds most closely to one’s autobiographical self—a controlling self that holds back the impulsiveness of the id in an effort to delay grati-fication until it can be found or expressed in socially approved ways. This was another way of describing the dialogue, or tension, between the inhibitory frontal lobe and the brain stem demands for immediate gratification. The superego, he said, was that part of the personality that corresponds to the notion of conscience, the part that controls and censors one’s behavior through learned moral and social values. The pull of the superego is much more toward one’s culture and conventional wisdom than to one’s biology. Freud was well aware of this, for he recognized in this tension the seeds of human neuroses. He proposed that the neuroses of civilized men and women resulted from the alienation of our egos (including the superego) from our primal, animal drives. In other words, we ignore our biological origins at great cost to our mental health. He was describing the consequences of the Human-Nature split.
In his analysis of human behavior, however, Freud went deeper than the ego. Putting his credibility at stake, he became the recognized spokesperson for that potentially fathomable realm of the human psyche—the unconscious. He saw it as the home of hidden agendas, the domain of repressed personal memories, motivations, and wishes, the reservoir from which our dreams and fantasies originate, as well as the source of what came to be known as Freudian slips. These are those memorable words or intentions that we deliberately try to suppress but that, in certain social settings, we inexplicably and embarrassingly let slip or act out.
In support of what he believed was the universality of the role of the unconscious mind in human behavior, Freud turned to mythology.His famous analysis of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex led the way to a plausible yet controversial theory of human psychosexual development. Drawing on an aspect of the famous Greek myth in which the hero unwittingly murders his father and marries his mother, he coined the now famous Oedipus complex to describe the unconscious sexual attachment of infants to parents of the opposite sex. He dared to propose that all infants relive the theme of this ancient myth in that they subconsciously wish for the murder or death of the parent/competitor of the same sex in order to have the other all to themselves. It is easy, steeped as we are in
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