Quote from: boci on November 11, 2008, 04:15:22 PM[...]A complex and pervasive issue for many paranoid people is the combination of sexual identity confusion, longings for same-sex closeness, and associated preoccupations with homosexuality. A connection between paranoia and homosexual preoccupations has been frequently noted by clinicians and has been confirmed by some empirical studies. Paranoid people, even the minority of them who have acted on homoerotic feelings, may regard the idea of same-sex attraction as upsetting to a degree that is scarcely imaginable to the non-paranoid. As the brief triumph of Nazism demonstrates, when paranoid trends are shared by a whole culture or subculture, the most horrific possibilities arise. The paranoid preoccupation with homosexuality has sometimes been explained as reflecting "unconscious homosexual impulses." This locution is misleading, in that it is not usually genital urges that stimulate homophobia; it is loneliness and the wish for a soulmate. Because as children we were comfortable with peers of the same sex before we became comfortable with opposite-sex peers, and because people of the same sex are more like us than people of the opposite sex, when we are withdrawn from everyone, we are attracted to someone of the same sex. Unfortunately, the patient becomes aware of this attraction, misinterprets it as homosexuality, and this sets off the defenses. In other words, at the core of the self-experience of paranoid people is a profound emotional isolation and need for a "consensual validation" from a "chum."So is this this kind of homosexual yearning, more of a "state of mind," rather than something that gets (sometimes) physically expressed (in a more or less normal homosexual act) - because, truth-be-told, I don't exactly see gay people today, that have sex with hundreds, or even thousands, of other men, considering same-sex attraction as "upsetting," as you put it. I am aware that you and I are talking about two different kinds of gay people here, but I am sort of confused as to how exactly does each one feel about how they are and what they do. Could someone please provide some insight? Thanks, in advance, breach of contract.
[...]A complex and pervasive issue for many paranoid people is the combination of sexual identity confusion, longings for same-sex closeness, and associated preoccupations with homosexuality. A connection between paranoia and homosexual preoccupations has been frequently noted by clinicians and has been confirmed by some empirical studies. Paranoid people, even the minority of them who have acted on homoerotic feelings, may regard the idea of same-sex attraction as upsetting to a degree that is scarcely imaginable to the non-paranoid. As the brief triumph of Nazism demonstrates, when paranoid trends are shared by a whole culture or subculture, the most horrific possibilities arise. The paranoid preoccupation with homosexuality has sometimes been explained as reflecting "unconscious homosexual impulses." This locution is misleading, in that it is not usually genital urges that stimulate homophobia; it is loneliness and the wish for a soulmate. Because as children we were comfortable with peers of the same sex before we became comfortable with opposite-sex peers, and because people of the same sex are more like us than people of the opposite sex, when we are withdrawn from everyone, we are attracted to someone of the same sex. Unfortunately, the patient becomes aware of this attraction, misinterprets it as homosexuality, and this sets off the defenses. In other words, at the core of the self-experience of paranoid people is a profound emotional isolation and need for a "consensual validation" from a "chum."
With one part of the equation (paranoia) in mind, let us further examine the other part (homosexuality). People have looked into the actual social milieu Hitler was part of to deduce that he, too, practiced homosexuality. For instance, Hitler's Youth leader, Baldur von Schirach was bisexual and a pedophile;Hitler's private attorney, Reich Legal Director, was homosexual;Minister of Justice, an adamant fag basher Hans Frank was a homosexual (typical);Hitler's adjutant Wilhelm Bruckner was bisexual;Walter Funk, Reich Minister of Economics and Hitler's personal financial advisor has frequently been called a "notorious" homosexual;Hitler's second in command Hermann Goering liked to dress up in drag;Rudolph Hess, the handsome Hess, nicknamed "Miss Emma" was gay;All of his personal bodyguards were gay;Even his chauffeur was gay.Hitler quit school at age 16 and in 1909 moved to Vienna, where he twice took and failed the Art Academy's entrance examination. Shortly after his move, August Kubizek, a young man from his hometown, joined him and they lived together for 4 months. Intensely jealous, Hitler wrote Kubizek, "I cannot endure it when you consort and converse with other young people." For the next several years, Hitler drifted aimlessly. Despite immense Nazi efforts to erase as much of his past as possible (by destroying his massive police records, for example) it is known that he spent 5 months at a men's hostel known as "a hub of homosexual activity." In May 1913, he moved with another young man to Munich (said to be "a regular El Dorado for homosexuals") and, in September 1914, joined the Bavarian army. He spent the war years as a behind-the-lines messenger, enjoying a long and active sexual relationship with another runner, Ernst Schmidt. At war's end, Hitler returned to Munich and more homosexual activities. He met at that time Capt. Ernst Roehm, a well-connected army officer who soon offered him his first job — as a political spy for the army within a newly organized workers' party. Hitler's rise largely was due to the two brilliant homosexuals who mentored and tutored him: Roehm, a notorious pederast and a contemporary, and Dietrich Eckart, 21 years his senior. Roehm, a career staff officer during the war, had access to both secret army funds and to military and right-wing groups such as the ultranationalist, anti-Semitic and homoerotic Freikorps — the fiercely anticommunist terrorist squads that sprang up, especially in eastern Germany, in response to the political chaos of the early Weimar Republic. Eckart was a fiercely anti-Semitic journalist and playwright who taught Hitler political tactics and introduced him to Munich and Berlin society, as well as to other wealthy people throughout the country. Most of the top ranking SS from the very beginning were also homosexual. Ernst Roehm, whom Hitler was a protégé, created the Nazi party on the idea of being proud so called ultra-masculine, male supremacist pedophiles. When you cast a net with that kind of bait what kind of fish do you think you are going to catch? In fact, they actually thought because of their homosexuality they were ultra-masculine because they didn't need women for anything, including sex and companionship. The idea was that because they had no personal need for women, homosexual men were superior to even heterosexual men. They believed that homosexual men were the foundation of all nation-states and represented the elite strata of human society. Naturally, to support their argument they drew much of their pride from the accomplishments of the Greeks, quite possibly the gayest civilization ever to walk to earth.
For one Freud has pointed to the sexual, and indeed the homoerotic, origins of political authority. [...] Freud locates the origins of the sons' collective organization, their ability to challenge the father's sexual monopoly, in "the homosexual feelings and activities which probably manifested themselves during the time of their banishment." The father's imposition of heterosexual austerities on his sons pushes them into mutual erotic identification, "into group psychology." After killing the primal father, the sons agree that all the clan's women would be denied them. In "Totem and Taboo" Freud made homoerotics into a substitution for heteroerotics, one standing at the origin of the first social contract, the sons' renunciation of the women of the clan as sensuous objects, and their conversion into sexual property to be exhanged exogamously. If exogamous heterosexuality is an original consequence of social organization, endogamous homosexuality is its original source. He never wavered on this foundational basis of modern social organization. Indeed in "Group Psychology and the Analysis of Ego" Freud makes heterosexual desire into an enemy of social organization, whereas "desexualized, sublimated homosexual love for other, which springs from work in common" is a "civilizing factor." There is no room for woman as a sexual object, he writes, in the great artificial groups of society. The implication is, of course, that there is a place for men as sexual objects. "It seems certain," he writes, "that homosexual love is far more compatible with group ties, even when it takes the shape of uninhibited sexual impulsion..." If in his mythico-history he makes the homoerotics of the rother clan the mediation between the primal horde and exogamous patriarchy, [...] The male self is both formed and sexed as a resolution of an inhabitation of the bodily form of paternal authority, an outside which is in us, but not of us, but the condition for our being. This homoerotic loss initiates the ego as a perceptual object, as a container for reflexively turned, unavowable erotic desire and sadistic rage at its loss and unhabitatibility. That desire is both refused and retained in a melancholic gender identification, an ungrievable loss. Men want to have the femininity they can never be and want to be the masculinity they can never have. The habitable space of gender is grounded in an uninhabitable space of sex. Paternal identification solves not one, but two problems in this sexual economy. Group formation likewise operates through paternal identification, which, like his murder, is enabled through homoerotic solidarity among the sons. Immediately after explaining in "Group Psychology" that the introjected paternal object is a substitute for the libidinal object tie with the woman, Freud launches into the genesis of male homosexuality, the boy's failure to give up the mother as a cathected object, the "negative" Oedipal complex, the transformation of the male ego on the model of the female. Boy becomes girl mirroring the way in which he has the man, through the matrilineal totem, becoming woman. Group formation is a quintessentially masculine, yet involves men being womanly.Freud makes homosocial energy the basis of solidarity in complex groups and locates the origin of the social in a renunciation of heterosexual desire. He derives the experience of consubstantiality of totem and man from a fleshy family, from the mother-child bond and the son's deferred identification with the father. [...] For what in Freud is a feminizing, violent subordination to masculine hierarchy [...]
Take Hitler: They say there is insufficient evidence that Hitler was an overt homosexual. But it seemed clear he had latent homosexual tendencies, and that he worried a lot about them. He was terribly concerned, for example, lest he give the impression of showing feminine traits - which, indeed, he did. A colleague of the himself-homosexual English diplomat and historian Sir Harold Nicolson, spoke of Hitler as being "the most profoundly feminine man that he had ever met, and that there were moments when he became almost effeminate." Hitler also revealed fears of homosexuality by protesting so much that he had no feminine characteristics whatsoever. He was totally masculine - tough, hard, cold, ruthless, brutal. His tendency to think in terms of disjunctive stereotypes about men and women (strong, iron-willed, effective males vs. weak, emotional, incompetent female) is in itself revealing. Such thinking demonstrates a strong conflict and confusion between masculine and feminine natures. To him, sexual differences appeared as exaggerated and mutually exclusive opposites, as roles to be played, rather as natural attributes of human personality. In Hitler's case, as in Himmler's, the fantasized tough male role developed into sadism, murder and destruction. The question of Hitler's latent homosexuality can also be approached indirectly. It can be stated with some confidence that Hitler must have had latent homosexual tendencies because he showed clear indications of paranoia. This does not mean that all homosexuals are paranoid, but it does mean that all paranoids have fears of homosexuality. The direct connection between homosexuality and paranoia was first noticed by Freud, who concluded that paranoia "invariably arises from an attempt to subdue an unduly powerful homosexual wish." There is a terrifically strong need to deny homosexuality; the very thought of sexual contact with another man is "completely intolerable." Moreover, the need felt by a paranoid for approval is especially acute; his megalomania is in itself an expression of his need for proof that he is important. There is a high incidence of constipation in paranoid individuals. All paranoids have strong anal components, problems with order and cleanliness, and obsessions with purity and vice, as well as impurity and infections of others. Anal sadistic fantasies are directed towards the father, because he is seen as the rival for the mother's love; the intensity of the drive to be loved is supported mainly "by the intense need to neutralize and erotisize a tremendous hate." When the unconscious hate is so great, the attempt to erotisize it fails, and the individual turns to sadism.While homosexual feeling and paranoid delusions may be in bitter conflict, both are, in a sense, dependent on each other and are defenses against one another. Thus, it seems quite possible that Hitler developed paranoid delusions, in part, to fight his homosexual feelings. As long as he persecuted and attacked homosexuals, he felt he was successfully combating his own inadmissible inclinations toward homosexuality.
White supremacists thus offer men the restoration of their masculinity -- Theirs is the militarized manhood of the heroic John Rambo, a manhood that celebrates their God-sanctioned right to band together in armed militias if anyone, or any government agency, tries to take it away from them. If the state and the economy emasculate them, and if the masculinity of the "others" is problematic, then only "real" white men can rescue America from a feminized, multicultural, androgynous melting pot.For instance, many of Hitler's policies -- such as the killing of long-time colleague and avowed homosexual Ernst Rohm, or even the systematic persecution and execution of gay men in concentration camps -- were, in fact, prompted by a desire to conceal his own homosexuality. But what do such accusations actually explain? Do revelations about Hitler's possible gay propensities raise troubling connections between homosexuality and mass murder? They do address the consequences of homophobia, at least -- both official and informal homophobia -- on young men who are exploring their sexual identities. What's relevant is not the possible fact of Hitler's gayness, but the shame and fear that surround homosexuality in societies that refuse to acknowledge sexual diversity. What is interesting about Hitler is not their repressed sexual orientation but gender -- their masculinity, their sense of masculine entitlement, and their thwarted ambitions. They accepted cultural definitions of masculinity, and needed someone to blame when they felt that they failed to measure up. (After all, being called a mama's boy, and told to toughen up are demands for gender conformity, not matters of sexual desire.)These males seek great power and status in society and understood that hating and punishing homosexuals was always perceived to be a reflection of the "highest morality." Therefore, one of the best "closet" situation available included their participation in the destruction of their own kind; it is now strongly suspected that Senator Joseph McCarthy who headed the American homosexual witch-hunts in the early 1950s was also homosexual. His prosecuting attorney, Roy Cohn, was definitely gay. At the time few people knew that the hunters of "dangerous", "evil," and "morally weak" homosexuals were themselves homosexual. If, however, anyone fitted negative homosexual stereotypes, it was these self-hating homo-hunters considered to be "morally righteous" because they were reflecting our society's traditional morality; this was the type of morality also used to make the desired destruction of all Native cultures appear to be righteous. We hated homosexuals and behaved accordingly, and Roy Cohn continued his abuses of homosexual people up to his death from AIDS in 1986. He had become very powerful, was very promiscuous, needed to have sex with a male at least once a day, and he could afford to have 4-5 young male prostitutes on his payroll so that his sexual needs would be met. He was strongly opposed to equal rights for gays, and was totally against the idea of having openly gay teachers in public schools. Our homohatred also causes other problems such as creating countless males - "monsters" - who are in a psychological closet, have sex with males, and always deny they are in any way homosexual or bisexual. This is done to avoid the total destruction of their self-esteem intimately related to socially learned perceptions. Ultra-macho males in prisons accomplish this by having a belief system causing them to degrade other males to a subhuman level. In accordance to men's traditional view of women, the inferior sex slave status of the males they rape, use, and abuse is deemed to be "the female status." Once males have been magically turned into women, dominant males then consider their homo-sexual activities with these women (also equates to gay-identified males) to then be "normal" and "heterosexual." There are, however, other ways that similar types of defenses against the homosexual self-label can be articulated. These males to be "homophobic, gay-bashing hoodlums who pick up or are picked up by a gay male, have sex with him, and they exorcize their own homosexual guilt by assaulting and maybe killing him. The "exorcist syndrome" which is a version of the "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" nature manifested by people like Cardinal Spellman and Roy Cohn. The phenomena is also similar to a "split personality" situation. One of the personalities is "the grand inquisitor," as McCarthy and Cohn had become in a spectacular way, and it needs to punish the homosexual part of their 'personality'. This internal war is also projected outward causing these socially created monsters to harm other gay males by ruining their careers or, as other males will do, punishing them may include physical assaults and even murder. A fascinating aspect of the war waged against gays in our society is the observation that it is often being waged by repressed homosexuals who may not be homosexually active, or repressed closeted homosexuals who are having sex with males and hate themselves. The targets may be other closeted homosexuals, but the victims are more often visible "out of the closet" gay males. These wars, however, would not exist if our society would stop its highly effective teaching of anti-homosexual attitudes and homohatred which produces many "closets" and all the horrors being described. When we teach hatred, we can expect to reap hatred, and its dividend: SOCIAL VIOLENCE. Hitler always used established perceptions of morality to sell the proposed abuses of people, and a similar situation existed with respect to black slavery. White supremacists had rationalized the idea that they were doing Black people a favor by having them as slaves! Our abuses of Native people was also based on immorality. The objective was to make them into people just like us because we believed they were seriously lacking.
[...] Therefore, one of the best "closet" situation available included their participation in the destruction of their own kind; it is now strongly suspected that Senator Joseph McCarthy who headed the American homosexual witch-hunts in the early 1950s was also homosexual. His prosecuting attorney, Roy Cohn, was definitely gay. At the time few people knew that the hunters of "dangerous", "evil," and "morally weak" homosexuals were themselves homosexual. If, however, anyone fitted negative homosexual stereotypes, it was these self-hating homo-hunters considered to be "morally righteous" because they were reflecting our society's traditional morality; this was the type of morality also used to make the desired destruction of all Native cultures appear to be righteous. We hated homosexuals and behaved accordingly, and Roy Cohn continued his abuses of homosexual people up to his death from AIDS in 1986. He had become very powerful, was very promiscuous, needed to have sex with a male at least once a day, and he could afford to have 4-5 young male prostitutes on his payroll so that his sexual needs would be met. He was strongly opposed to equal rights for gays, and was totally against the idea of having openly gay teachers in public schools. [...] The phenomena is also similar to a "split personality" situation. One of the personalities is "the grand inquisitor," as McCarthy and Cohn had become in a spectacular way, and it needs to punish the homosexual part of their 'personality'. This internal war is also projected outward causing these socially created monsters to harm other gay males by ruining their careers or, as other males will do, punishing them may include physical assaults and even murder. A fascinating aspect of the war waged against gays in our society is the observation that it is often being waged by repressed homosexuals who may not be homosexually active, or repressed closeted homosexuals who are having sex with males and hate themselves. The targets may be other closeted homosexuals, but the victims are more often visible "out of the closet" gay males. [...]
The relevant "South Park" episode -- entitled "Trapped in the Closet" -- self-consciously skirts the outermost edges of the First Amendment's protection for parody. A court would probably deem it constitutionally protected, but only barely. Defamation requires a "statement of fact" -- and for this reason, most parody, because of its fictional nature, falls outside defamation law by definition. But this is the rare parody that, fairly read, does make a statement of fact. In the episode, the animated version of Cruise literally goes into a closet, and won't come out. Other characters beg him to "come out of the closet," including the animated version of his ex-wife, Nicole Kidman. The Kidman character promises Cruise that if he comes out of the closet, neither she nor "Katie" will judge him. But the Cruise character claims he isn't "in the closet," even though he plainly is. No one could miss that the episode's creators are taking a stance and making a statement -- that the real Cruise is gay and hiding it. The use of the euphemism "in the closet" -- used to refer to someone who is homosexual but who has not admitted his or her homosexuality to friends, family, or the public -- is transparent. Interestingly, the episode itself indicates that its creators know well that they may be defaming Cruise, and they know of his litigious history. The joke disclaimer preceding the episode announces that "All characters and events on this show -- even those based on real persons -- are entirely fictional." At the end of the episode, the Cruise character threatens to bring a suit (not on the gay issue, but in defense of Scientology) "in England" -- which lacks a formal equivalent of the First Amendment. And all the credits at the end use the pseudonyms "John Smith" and "Jane Smith." Since the episode does indeed make a "statement of fact," the parody exception to defamation law won't save "South Park." Thus, the creators' only weapon against a possible suit by Cruise is a First Amendment defense. Fortunately for them, the Supreme Court has interpreted the defense very broadly.[...] It's one thing to co-opt part of a song, or use a trademark, in a parody: Without using part of the original, the parody won't work at all; no one will know what its target is. But it's another thing to embed what would otherwise be a defamatory statement in a work of fiction: This is defamation in satire's clothing, and it's only in order to protect true satire that that the Constitution has been held to also protect this lesser creature. Generally, courts don't want to get into the business of picking out nuggets of fact from an otherwise fictional account. The upshot, though -- and courts know this, and accept this cost in the service of free speech -- is that parody and satire inevitably may become a refuge for rogues who seek to defame without liability. That seems to me to be just what's happening with respect to the "South Park" episode.
Quote from: that guest on January 30, 2012, 08:21:13 PMQuote from: Hadrian on November 17, 2007, 12:13:55 PM[...]The theory or the "model" at the base of author's reflections is Bion's model "container-contained", also called his "theory of thinking". [...] It is at one and the same time: the model of conception (penis-in-vagina), gestation (embryo-in-uterus), alimentation (nipple-in-mouth) and elimination (faeces-in-colon). This fundamental pattern -- 'one thing inside another', as Bion simply calls it -- in its many variations and permutations, forms the model for all human somatopsychological experience from the very beginning of life. Bion posits a "place" or an "object", which he calls the "container", whose purpose is to take up a "something" which needs to be contained. Through this process both container and that-which-is-to-be-contained are transformed, and something new, a "third" element comes into being. [...] Bion's starting point is what he refers to as the "proto-mental", the somato-psychic level of experiences, consisting of emotional entities "in the raw", which to he gives the name "beta elements". According to Bion, these bits of raw sense data are, as it were, "looking for", or "in search of" a place where they can grow and be transformed into thoughts, dreams ideas, myths, etc. For in Bion's theory of thinking, all thoughts exist a priori to their being actually thought; that is to say, they are simply 'there' in some potential space/time, independent of there being a thinker to think them. Bion's image of thoughts simply being "there" without having found a thinker to think them yet, is reminiscent of Luigi Pirandello's drama "Six Characters in Search of an Author." They, too, these six characters "exist" ostensibly a priori to an author's mind having created them, and their search can be thought of as being analogous to the "searching" of thoughts for a mind, for a thinker to think them.When these "thoughts without a thinker" find such a "nesting place" in the mind of a "host" (mother, therapist, consultant, supervisor, leader etc.) so to speak, they can then be transformed into so-called "alpha elements" through the state of mind which Bion has named "reverie", and the process which he has called "alpha function." He emphasizes, however, that he neither knows what alpha-function is or how it functions, he just knows that it does! [...] It all depends, he says, on the presence of "negative capability", i.e. the capability to take in without judging and without explanation, the ability just to "be with one's experience", to tolerate uncertainty, mystery and doubt without any "irritable grasping for facts and reason."When the containing object (the psyche of the container) takes up the contained (i.e. the projected, the not-understood, the painful, needy, as yet uncontained, unthinkable beta elements) from the subject, it must be capable of carrying out this metabolic, disentangling process within itself, in order to be able to feed it back to the subject in small, digestible doses, so that it can now be metabolised by the subject and used for mental growth, rather than being simply expelled, "spat out" again as mentally indigestible. Negative capability, which enables the object to "dream" (reverie) upon, to ponder and reflect upon these projected parts, requires a state of mind which Bion calls "patience" and which gradually changes into a state of mind which he calls "certainty" when the "to-be-contained" has been understood, detoxicated and re-presented to the subject. [...] This, then, is the process which, according to Bion, has to take place in every mother, in every therapist, consultant or supervisor, in every leader if he has the intention of being helpful to his/her "baby" (patient, client, supervisee, client system, team, staff, organisation, company, nation or people), and to the extent to which the necessity of performing a containing function for those who are to follow his or her lead is both recognised and possible.This appears to be quite interesting to me - could someone provide a link where I can read the whole thing - I mean, Bion's theory of the Container/Contained?that guest - are you trying to be a smart a s s here, pulling our legs, or what?! This guy is an a s s - and when I say an a s s, I mean a TOTAL A S S - and you want a link where to read all his crap?! Container-Contained, d i c k-in-a-p u s s y and * & ^ % like that! But it's not his fault, it's the fault of all the a s s e s that read and print him! I mean, we've read a lot of crazy stuff before, Freud too used to be a moron, but not THIS moronic! Or better to say, because we've been reading him for such a long time, we've kinda gotten used to his * & ^ % a little by little! Anyways, looks like that's how this thing works, they see people kinda accept one guy's * & ^ %, and they go for their own * & ^ %, hoping they won't look to people as idiotic as they truly are!
Quote from: Hadrian on November 17, 2007, 12:13:55 PM[...]The theory or the "model" at the base of author's reflections is Bion's model "container-contained", also called his "theory of thinking". [...] It is at one and the same time: the model of conception (penis-in-vagina), gestation (embryo-in-uterus), alimentation (nipple-in-mouth) and elimination (faeces-in-colon). This fundamental pattern -- 'one thing inside another', as Bion simply calls it -- in its many variations and permutations, forms the model for all human somatopsychological experience from the very beginning of life. Bion posits a "place" or an "object", which he calls the "container", whose purpose is to take up a "something" which needs to be contained. Through this process both container and that-which-is-to-be-contained are transformed, and something new, a "third" element comes into being. [...] Bion's starting point is what he refers to as the "proto-mental", the somato-psychic level of experiences, consisting of emotional entities "in the raw", which to he gives the name "beta elements". According to Bion, these bits of raw sense data are, as it were, "looking for", or "in search of" a place where they can grow and be transformed into thoughts, dreams ideas, myths, etc. For in Bion's theory of thinking, all thoughts exist a priori to their being actually thought; that is to say, they are simply 'there' in some potential space/time, independent of there being a thinker to think them. Bion's image of thoughts simply being "there" without having found a thinker to think them yet, is reminiscent of Luigi Pirandello's drama "Six Characters in Search of an Author." They, too, these six characters "exist" ostensibly a priori to an author's mind having created them, and their search can be thought of as being analogous to the "searching" of thoughts for a mind, for a thinker to think them.When these "thoughts without a thinker" find such a "nesting place" in the mind of a "host" (mother, therapist, consultant, supervisor, leader etc.) so to speak, they can then be transformed into so-called "alpha elements" through the state of mind which Bion has named "reverie", and the process which he has called "alpha function." He emphasizes, however, that he neither knows what alpha-function is or how it functions, he just knows that it does! [...] It all depends, he says, on the presence of "negative capability", i.e. the capability to take in without judging and without explanation, the ability just to "be with one's experience", to tolerate uncertainty, mystery and doubt without any "irritable grasping for facts and reason."When the containing object (the psyche of the container) takes up the contained (i.e. the projected, the not-understood, the painful, needy, as yet uncontained, unthinkable beta elements) from the subject, it must be capable of carrying out this metabolic, disentangling process within itself, in order to be able to feed it back to the subject in small, digestible doses, so that it can now be metabolised by the subject and used for mental growth, rather than being simply expelled, "spat out" again as mentally indigestible. Negative capability, which enables the object to "dream" (reverie) upon, to ponder and reflect upon these projected parts, requires a state of mind which Bion calls "patience" and which gradually changes into a state of mind which he calls "certainty" when the "to-be-contained" has been understood, detoxicated and re-presented to the subject. [...] This, then, is the process which, according to Bion, has to take place in every mother, in every therapist, consultant or supervisor, in every leader if he has the intention of being helpful to his/her "baby" (patient, client, supervisee, client system, team, staff, organisation, company, nation or people), and to the extent to which the necessity of performing a containing function for those who are to follow his or her lead is both recognised and possible.This appears to be quite interesting to me - could someone provide a link where I can read the whole thing - I mean, Bion's theory of the Container/Contained?
[...]The theory or the "model" at the base of author's reflections is Bion's model "container-contained", also called his "theory of thinking". [...] It is at one and the same time: the model of conception (penis-in-vagina), gestation (embryo-in-uterus), alimentation (nipple-in-mouth) and elimination (faeces-in-colon). This fundamental pattern -- 'one thing inside another', as Bion simply calls it -- in its many variations and permutations, forms the model for all human somatopsychological experience from the very beginning of life. Bion posits a "place" or an "object", which he calls the "container", whose purpose is to take up a "something" which needs to be contained. Through this process both container and that-which-is-to-be-contained are transformed, and something new, a "third" element comes into being. [...] Bion's starting point is what he refers to as the "proto-mental", the somato-psychic level of experiences, consisting of emotional entities "in the raw", which to he gives the name "beta elements". According to Bion, these bits of raw sense data are, as it were, "looking for", or "in search of" a place where they can grow and be transformed into thoughts, dreams ideas, myths, etc. For in Bion's theory of thinking, all thoughts exist a priori to their being actually thought; that is to say, they are simply 'there' in some potential space/time, independent of there being a thinker to think them. Bion's image of thoughts simply being "there" without having found a thinker to think them yet, is reminiscent of Luigi Pirandello's drama "Six Characters in Search of an Author." They, too, these six characters "exist" ostensibly a priori to an author's mind having created them, and their search can be thought of as being analogous to the "searching" of thoughts for a mind, for a thinker to think them.When these "thoughts without a thinker" find such a "nesting place" in the mind of a "host" (mother, therapist, consultant, supervisor, leader etc.) so to speak, they can then be transformed into so-called "alpha elements" through the state of mind which Bion has named "reverie", and the process which he has called "alpha function." He emphasizes, however, that he neither knows what alpha-function is or how it functions, he just knows that it does! [...] It all depends, he says, on the presence of "negative capability", i.e. the capability to take in without judging and without explanation, the ability just to "be with one's experience", to tolerate uncertainty, mystery and doubt without any "irritable grasping for facts and reason."When the containing object (the psyche of the container) takes up the contained (i.e. the projected, the not-understood, the painful, needy, as yet uncontained, unthinkable beta elements) from the subject, it must be capable of carrying out this metabolic, disentangling process within itself, in order to be able to feed it back to the subject in small, digestible doses, so that it can now be metabolised by the subject and used for mental growth, rather than being simply expelled, "spat out" again as mentally indigestible. Negative capability, which enables the object to "dream" (reverie) upon, to ponder and reflect upon these projected parts, requires a state of mind which Bion calls "patience" and which gradually changes into a state of mind which he calls "certainty" when the "to-be-contained" has been understood, detoxicated and re-presented to the subject. [...] This, then, is the process which, according to Bion, has to take place in every mother, in every therapist, consultant or supervisor, in every leader if he has the intention of being helpful to his/her "baby" (patient, client, supervisee, client system, team, staff, organisation, company, nation or people), and to the extent to which the necessity of performing a containing function for those who are to follow his or her lead is both recognised and possible.
Quote from: charisma on October 27, 2008, 07:25:42 PM [...] [...] Perhaps the Rorschach test can, as claimed, provide an "X-ray of the mind." But, asks Lilienfeld, whose mind: that of the client or the examiner?TITCR!You hit the nail on the @ # ! * i n g head, charisma!
[...] [...] Perhaps the Rorschach test can, as claimed, provide an "X-ray of the mind." But, asks Lilienfeld, whose mind: that of the client or the examiner?
Wow, blinker on, you've come a long way baby - take a look here with this other * & ^ % that I am surprised they still use it! Quote from: after virtue on December 01, 2008, 08:11:00 PMQuote from: charisma on October 27, 2008, 07:25:42 PMTake for instance, the Rorschach test. Its inkblots are purportedly ambiguous, structureless entities which are to be given a clear structure by the interpreter. Like all projective tests, the Rorschach presents viewers with ambiguous images and asks them to interpret the images, thereby eliciting their thoughts, fears, motives, and fantasies. The 10 symmetrical inkblots used in the test (5 contain color, 5 are black and gray) are always the same, given in a specific order, and are supposed to be kept secret from the public to ensure "spontaneous" answers that give clues to people's personalities – and personality disorders. The Rorschach originally came under fire in the 1950s and '60s because it lacked standardized procedures for its administration and scoring.[...] Projective tests like the Rorschach, the TAT (Thematic Apperception Test), which features cards with drawings of ambiguous situations, mostly featuring people, and the Draw-A-Person (clients are asked to draw a person of the same sex and the opposite sex) can take hours to administer and score, and rely heavily on examiner interpretation and, in some part, intuition. [...] Perhaps the Rorschach test can, as claimed, provide an "X-ray of the mind." But, asks Lilienfeld, whose mind: that of the client or the examiner? TITCR!You hit the nail on the @ # ! * i n g head, charisma!That's exactly the problem: the ambiguity of the inkblot, the fact that the same picture can be interpreted both ways, so to speak, "positively," and "negatively" - with these latter terms being relative, because what's considered "positive/relatively positive" for case (interpreter) #1, based on his/her own intuition/experience, may be the "negative/relative negative" of case (interpreter) #2, again, based on her/his intuition/experience Of course, it would be nice if one would get the opinions of more than one interpreter, get like 2, or even more, in order to come to a better conclusion (something which in practice does not really happen, but we are talking what it would be happen in a perfect world, so to speak, again
Quote from: charisma on October 27, 2008, 07:25:42 PMTake for instance, the Rorschach test. Its inkblots are purportedly ambiguous, structureless entities which are to be given a clear structure by the interpreter. Like all projective tests, the Rorschach presents viewers with ambiguous images and asks them to interpret the images, thereby eliciting their thoughts, fears, motives, and fantasies. The 10 symmetrical inkblots used in the test (5 contain color, 5 are black and gray) are always the same, given in a specific order, and are supposed to be kept secret from the public to ensure "spontaneous" answers that give clues to people's personalities – and personality disorders. The Rorschach originally came under fire in the 1950s and '60s because it lacked standardized procedures for its administration and scoring.[...] Projective tests like the Rorschach, the TAT (Thematic Apperception Test), which features cards with drawings of ambiguous situations, mostly featuring people, and the Draw-A-Person (clients are asked to draw a person of the same sex and the opposite sex) can take hours to administer and score, and rely heavily on examiner interpretation and, in some part, intuition. [...] Perhaps the Rorschach test can, as claimed, provide an "X-ray of the mind." But, asks Lilienfeld, whose mind: that of the client or the examiner? TITCR!You hit the nail on the @ # ! * i n g head, charisma!
Take for instance, the Rorschach test. Its inkblots are purportedly ambiguous, structureless entities which are to be given a clear structure by the interpreter. Like all projective tests, the Rorschach presents viewers with ambiguous images and asks them to interpret the images, thereby eliciting their thoughts, fears, motives, and fantasies. The 10 symmetrical inkblots used in the test (5 contain color, 5 are black and gray) are always the same, given in a specific order, and are supposed to be kept secret from the public to ensure "spontaneous" answers that give clues to people's personalities – and personality disorders. The Rorschach originally came under fire in the 1950s and '60s because it lacked standardized procedures for its administration and scoring.[...] Projective tests like the Rorschach, the TAT (Thematic Apperception Test), which features cards with drawings of ambiguous situations, mostly featuring people, and the Draw-A-Person (clients are asked to draw a person of the same sex and the opposite sex) can take hours to administer and score, and rely heavily on examiner interpretation and, in some part, intuition. [...] Perhaps the Rorschach test can, as claimed, provide an "X-ray of the mind." But, asks Lilienfeld, whose mind: that of the client or the examiner?
Quote from: naykid on January 28, 2012, 07:56:05 PMTake Hitler: They say there is insufficient evidence that Hitler was an overt homosexual. But it seemed clear he had latent homosexual tendencies, and that he worried a lot about them. He was terribly concerned, for example, lest he give the impression of showing feminine traits - which, indeed, he did. A colleague of the himself-homosexual English diplomat and historian Sir Harold Nicolson, spoke of Hitler as being "the most profoundly feminine man that he had ever met, and that there were moments when he became almost effeminate." Hitler also revealed fears of homosexuality by protesting so much that he had no feminine characteristics whatsoever. He was totally masculine - tough, hard, cold, ruthless, brutal. His tendency to think in terms of disjunctive stereotypes about men and women (strong, iron-willed, effective males vs. weak, emotional, incompetent female) is in itself revealing. Such thinking demonstrates a strong conflict and confusion between masculine and feminine natures. To him, sexual differences appeared as exaggerated and mutually exclusive opposites, as roles to be played, rather as natural attributes of human personality. In Hitler's case, as in Himmler's, the fantasized tough male role developed into sadism, murder and destruction. The question of Hitler's latent homosexuality can also be approached indirectly. It can be stated with some confidence that Hitler must have had latent homosexual tendencies because he showed clear indications of paranoia. This does not mean that all homosexuals are paranoid, but it does mean that all paranoids have fears of homosexuality. The direct connection between homosexuality and paranoia was first noticed by Freud, who concluded that paranoia "invariably arises from an attempt to subdue an unduly powerful homosexual wish." There is a terrifically strong need to deny homosexuality; the very thought of sexual contact with another man is "completely intolerable." Moreover, the need felt by a paranoid for approval is especially acute; his megalomania is in itself an expression of his need for proof that he is important. There is a high incidence of constipation in paranoid individuals. All paranoids have strong anal components, problems with order and cleanliness, and obsessions with purity and vice, as well as impurity and infections of others. Anal sadistic fantasies are directed towards the father, because he is seen as the rival for the mother's love; the intensity of the drive to be loved is supported mainly "by the intense need to neutralize and erotisize a tremendous hate." When the unconscious hate is so great, the attempt to erotisize it fails, and the individual turns to sadism.While homosexual feeling and paranoid delusions may be in bitter conflict, both are, in a sense, dependent on each other and are defenses against one another. Thus, it seems quite possible that Hitler developed paranoid delusions, in part, to fight his homosexual feelings. As long as he persecuted and attacked homosexuals, he felt he was successfully combating his own inadmissible inclinations toward homosexuality.Does the latter mean that, Hitler called, for instance, Jews homosexuals (allegedly undermining the manliness and and fighting spirit of the German people) in part to fight his unacceptable homosexual feelings? Or, that he judged so many other people as being inferior, lacking that perceived German "manliness" and "fighting spirit," as it was the case with Communists, liberals, gypsies, homosexuals, victims of warfare, etc?! Distancing now a bit from the homosexual part of the equation, to fully address the paranoia one, we would have to add that when concocting the Jews conspiracy he mixed antisemitism and stereotypes of the Jews as Communists, as subversives and all kinds of other things - as a means to an end. Jews became a scapegoat for Germany's economic problems - enough to remind people of that conspiracy of "Jewish bankers" (Remember Fräulein Kost's line from "Cabaret," when asking, "If all the Jews are bankers, then how can they be Communists, too?") A distinctive feature of Hitler's antisemitism was that it was formulated as conspiracy theory. For many, especially in Bavaria, this went hand in hand with the 'stab-in-the-back' theory, that is, with the view that Germany had not been defeated on the battlefield but had been brought down by liberal, socialist and Communist subversives on the home front. In other words, it was claimed that "the Jews had caused Germany's defeat in World War 1." Potentially, this made antisemitism explosive in Germany.As we try to understand Holocaust, we'd have to also explain a bit the Darwinian biology of the time. There was a growing sense that there were those in society who were 'biologically' inferior and that for a 'fit' world to survive and thrive, those who were 'unfit' should be done away with. Instead of letting nature take its course, there was a unspoken sense that humans could take matters into their own hands. So when Hitler took power he started rounding all these people up. He used the Jews, Poles, gays, gypsies, Russians and mentally challenged people as slave labor and then started to annihilate them in gas chambers. He classed the above mentioned people as sub-human and basically in his Nazi world there was no place for the "sub-human", only the 'Aryans'.
No need to get overexcited about the "right to bear arms." You have to remember that in Western democracies (especially America) the police maintains the public order with an iron hand. Just beacause you have a gun it does not mean that you will use it -- in fact, the majority of people get a gun "for the fun of it," as an insurance that were they attacked they'd be able to get back to the attacker. However, the possibility of being attacked in middle class neighborhoods is minimal and these people almost never put their guns to use. It is not like in some countries where there are virtually no laws and people set the record straight themselves. It is in these countries that the right to bear arms would prove detrimental. For instance, it is well-known that in ex-communist countries journalists are beaten randomly when they publish discrediting articles about a political figure of their country. Not to mention that even politicians themselves have been treated like * & ^ % in these countries (Russia, for instance). Intelligence services' agents have beaten political adversaries of their superiors so bad that they have nearly died; or their houses have come under heavy gun fire. Assassination attempts towards high level government figures are random even after so many years of trying to establish democratic societies.
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