Living Life From A Third Person Perspective

[pa pa americano]

It can be precipitated by overwhelming stress. This stress may be provoked by seeing or experiencing an accident, a disaster or a traumatic event, including sexual abuse, and especially during childhood.

More on the case, depersonalization is an 'alteration' in the perception or experience of the self so that one feels 'detached' from, and as if one is an 'outside' observer of, one's mental processes or body. A feeling of watching oneself act, while having no control over a situation. It can be considered desirable, such as in the use of recreational drugs, but it usually refers to the severe form found in anxiety and, in the most intense case, panic attacks. A sufferer feels that he or she has changed and the world has become less real, vague, dream-like, or lacking in significance. It can sometimes be a rather disturbing experience, since many feel that indeed, they are living in a "dream." Chronic depersonalization refers to depersonalization disorder, which is classified by the DSM-IV as a dissociative disorder.

Derealization is a similar term to depersonalization, and the two are often used interchangeably. However, more specifically, derealization is the feeling that "nothing is real," while depersonalization is the feeling that one is "detached" from one's body or world. Though these feelings can happen to anyone who is under temporary severe anxiety/stress. Derealization and depersonalization disorder are most prominent in anxiety disorders, clinical depression, bipolar disorder, sleep deprivation, and some types of epilepsy.

Modus, I don't think they're talking about the same thing..

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Wernicke's area is in the posterior temporal lobe and surrounds the primary auditory area. That is quite obvious, because of the links between listening and speaking. Words reach A1 and, then, Wernicke's area, which contains sound images of heard words. Hence, thanks to this area, we can comprehend the words we hear. The information is sent to the Broca's area by the arcuate fasciculus. Broca's area is situated in the left inferior frontal region and creates those programmes for moving the organs we use to articulate words (mouth, tongue, etc.)

The mind in not the brain. The mind is an energy field. The brain is a physical 'switchboard' between the mind and the body. Research has shown that words are stored in a specific area on the left side of the brain. What is not so well known is that there is an equivalent area in the right half of the brain which is also involved with language. Both these areas are called the Wernicke's area. According to Professor Julian Jaynes, lecturer in Psychology at Princeton University, up until around 3,000 years ago, mankind was basically not conscious as he is today. He did not think in terms of concepts, and he was not introspective (i.e. he did not 'turn inwards and think about himself). Instead he operated with what is called a "bicameral mind". The bicameral mind was man's mind before he developed self consciousness. Early man did not make any decisions on his own. The concept of "self", of being independent and self-reliant, did not exist. Whenever a decision had to be made, early man looked for a "sign" from an outside authority, such as a king or a god, to tell him what to do. For example, if he went along a road which divided into two roads, he might throw some stones into the air to see which way they fell, to tell him which road to take. Other signs that early man used to determine what action he should take when he was faced with a decision were often "voices" which he heard in his head and which brought immediate obedience. Experiments have shown that if the Wernicke's area in the left half of the brain is electrically stimulated during speech, it will interfere with the ability to talk properly, almost halting speech.

Here it is a related post in this forum related to Wernicke's area:

http://www.lawschooldiscussion.org/index.php?topic=3003243.msg5289560#msg5289560

[conenact]

Definitely the sort of thing that happens to people from time to time. I found out, however, that oftentimes, you switch between the first and third person perspective in how you experience the world.

Wow - that's a very interesting post, search engine, can you expand a bit?

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Freud himself who was to declare to Fliess in a letter dated 16 January 1898, that money did not form the object of an infantile wish which is why, as the well-known saying puts it, money proves incapable of "making one happy" as an adult. Yet, it can nevertheless give the impression of doing so, to the extent that it is capable as we know from Freudian metapsychology of functioning as the unconscious substitute and equivalent for any "object" whatsoever that is invested by the libido of the subject, be this oral, phallic or, especially, anal. [...]

On a material level, faeces represent for children their first possessions of value. Indeed, if children tend at first, roughly between the ages of 2 and 3, to take an auto-erotic pleasure in defecating (the first phase of the anal stage), they subsequently discover, around the age of 3 or 4, that they can obtain a more intense excitation by holding back their stool (the second phase of the anal stage). This is the source of the pleasure adults take in holding onto money, valuable objects or, yet again, time (as shown by the character-traits of avarice and parsimony, as well as the pleasure of hoarding or saving), in accordance with the equation of money and excrement. [...]

[...] In the most extreme case, according to the psycho-analytical argument that is often put forward, an overly active or precocious repression of the child's psychosexual development during the anal stage -- especially at the moment of toilet training -- can lead to the development, in later life, of a veritable obsessional (or, as it was sometimes called, anal) neurosis. Since the pathbreaking work of Oskar Pfister on the psychical structure of classical capitalism and the financial mind, an entire current of thought (Reich, Fromm, etc.) has endeavored to locate within the capitalist system the indices of a collective obsessional neurotic syndrome. Just as the child is under the illusion of the omnipotence of his or her excrements, so the capitalist would tend to believe that his or her money gives him or her the power -- and, above all, the right -- to do whatever he or she so desires.

So basically,

money = * & ^ %
capitalism = anal

For the sake of truth, there's more to the story, appropriate! When anality becomes a perversion in an individual it can result in a danger to that individual, and as a cultural phenomenon, to humanity. There is a clearly defined link between the anal-sadistic phase of sexuality and cruelty. An "instinct of cruelty" appears in Freud's "Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality," stating that there is an intimate connection between cruelty and the sexual instinct; whether active or passive, it also stems from the drive for mastery. Like mastery, cruelty involves the use of the object simply as a means of satisfaction. Sadism involves a pleasure derived from the object's suffering. The deriving of sexual gratification from inflicting pain or emotional abuse on others.

After the introduction of the death drive in 1920, the drive for cruelty gave way to the "destructive drive," understood as an external deflection of the death drive and described as aggressive when directed at objects. If it is taken up by the ego, the ego itself becomes cruel or sadistic. The ego then risks not only losing the object's love but also being subjected to the reprimands of the Superego. This agency, which equates with moral conscience, can demonstrate an extreme cruelty, according to the need for aggression aroused by present/past frustrations. Rebellious by nature towards what is nevertheless the necessary process of civilization, the human being is always able to display a "cruel aggressiveness" if circumstances allow it.

Contempt, indifference towards the object, cruelty, as well as false emblems of masculinity, faceless bureaucracy, violence, torture, the jackboot and the whip. Freud described the psychosexual development of the child, how he progresses from the anal-sadistic phase to the phallic (genital) one, at the end of which the Oedipus complex finds resolution. It is the smashing/destruction, a developmental arrest at the anal-sadistic phase, as opposed to resolution of the Oedipus complex, that characterizes Western culture.

Tag on Freud's Sexuality/Capitalism.

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For the sake of truth, the INfamous Bell Curve has a very direct connection to Social Darwinism and the eugenics movement. The book "The Bell Curve," for instance, is perhaps one of the most controversial books of all time. Written by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, the book uses empirical statistical analysis to reach conclusion of intelligence gap in American society. Two of the most controversial conclusions reached by the author are the relationships between low measured intelligence and anti-social behavior and the observed relationship between low African-American test scores, when compared to Asians or whites, and genetic factors in intelligence abilities.

Or in Stephen Jay Gould's words, "The Bell Curve" rests on two distinctly different but sequential arguments, which together encompass the classic corpus of biological determinism as a social philosophy - in other words, Social Darwinism.

Social Darwinism holds that Darwin's theory of evolution can be applied to the development of human social institutions. It first become popular in late 19th century and continued until end of World War II. The application of the term to 19th and 20th century modes of thought, however, generally did not occur until after the publication of American historian Richard Hofstadter's "Social Darwinism in American Thought" in 1944, which codified the concept in the sense it is generally used today.

Social Darwinism is often linked to eugenics, and is the backbone of Herrnstein & Murray's arguments, according to which humans are separated not only by race and class, but also by IQ - this being the central theme of the arguments brought forth by these authors. This argument may deviate from the original 19th century theory of Social Darwinism; however, its use of statistical analysis of IQ is the central thought of 20th century Social Darwinism. The conclusions of the authors suggest people who have high IQ would be more "successful in life" and people with low IQ will encounter more problems in life such as unemployment, divorce, crime, and poverty. Using Social Darwinism, survival of the fittest (or should we, more appropriately, say, survival of the unfittest, the fat lazy a s s e s?) and other laws of evolution can be applied to human society; hence, it can be understood, that the people with high IQ be successful in life therefore have a easier time passing on their "good" gene to the next generation because they have a easier time finding a partner. On other hand, the people with low IQ, often exert anti-social behavior, hence have problems finding and supporting a partner, therefore would have problem passing their gene to the next generation.

They maintain that

"It is time for America once again to try living with inequality, as life is lived: understanding that each human being has strengths and weaknesses, qualities we admire and qualities we do not admire, competencies and incompetencies, assets and debits; that the success of each human life is not measured externally but internally; that all of the rewards we can confer on each other, the most precious is a place as a valued fellow citizen."

This idea is the 20th century Social Darwinism. This idea is also the idea behind eugenic movements and research which was not unpopular during the time.


Hitler believed humans were animals to whom the genetics laws, learned from livestock breeding, could be applied. The Nazis believed that instead of permitting natural forces and chance to control evolution, they must direct the process to advance the human race. The first step to achieve this goal was to isolate the 'inferior races' in order to prevent them from further contaminating the ‘Aryan’ gene pool. The widespread public support for this policy was a result of the belief, common in the educated classes, in the conclusion that certain races were genetically inferior as was scientifically 'proven' by Darwinism. The Nazis believed that they were simply applying facts, proven by science, to produce a superior race of humans as part of their plan for a better world: 'The business of the corporate state was eugenics or artificial selection — politics as applied biology'.

Some may argue the connection between "The Bell Curve" and Social Darwinist eugenic movements of the time. But many facts show strong connection between the two. Firstly, as early as 1971, Herrnstein published an article in a prestigious US magazine, 'Atlantic Monthly', and can be quoted "the tendency to be unemployed may run in the genes of a family about as certainly as bad teeth do now.... As the wealth and complexity of human society grow, there will be precipitated out of the mass of humanity a low-capacity residue that may be unable to master the common occupations..." Secondly, Herrnstein's political stance is very conservative; "It is hard to argue that the "class struggle" can be resolved by a redistribution of wealth and capital, if it should turn out that something more than economics distinguishes the contending classes." Thirdly, quoted from an ABC New Report transcript, "Ever since 1937, the 'Pioneer Fund' has promoted the study of racial purity as a an ideal. Over the past 10 years, according to public documents, the 'Pioneer Fund' contributed $3.5 million to researchers cited in "The Bell Curve."

Finally, Herrnstein is found to be connected with the journal 'Mankind Quarterly', which is owned by Roger Pearson for the last 25 years. Pearson was a leader of the pro-fascist Northern League, which included a number of former Nazi SS officials, and a member of the World Anti-Communist League, described by former member Geoffrey Stewart-Smith as a collection of Nazis, fascists, anti-Semites, and vicious racists. These facts suggest strong ties between the authors and ideas of "The Bell Curve" with Social Darwinism movement of the time. "The Bell Curve" brought the theories of Social Darwinism into the public. It introduced the mass population to the idea IQ, something heritable, being the main determining factor for success in life, and it did it in a "scientific" way which help the idea to be accepted by the public.

http://www.lawschooldiscussion.org/index.php?topic=3002385.msg5397824#msg5397824

Yea Right!