our moment of zen
In an off-handed manner, Freud described the highest form of pleasure as lack of tension and stimulation. Spiritual virtuousity, according to him, was not available to the majority of human beings: he is concerned the average person, who is unable to immolate the senses, who is susceptible to short cuts, who is attached to the material world and feels all too sharply the ravages of cupidity, aggression, desire for vengeance, envy either of penises or of other things, the darkness of disappointments. Freedom and detachment were not goals that could be attained through any Master's guidance: every analysis follows a completely idiosyncratic path. And the end of analysis is precisely not the annihilation of the ego preached by every five and dime guru, nor the inflation of it by every self-help meister.
There is a powerful populism of and in psychoanalysis that has yet to be affirmed.
13 Comments:
Or bend the whole affair (and analysis) in a circle:
www.town.nagi.okayama.jp/moca/to12.htm
hi!professor Lui:
I am not quite get the idea of this artical, who is Freud and zen?and what was it he said? human being?
ps. I like your photo!where were you? and Leo seems grow taller!!
student from TNNUA
Kim
to Kim,
Freud Zen? Too much to explain. Zen is a form of Buddhism. We are at the Japanese Meditation garden in Pasadena!
I cannot help but notice that you juxtapose the "five and dime guru" with Freud, instead of with the "five and dime" psychologist or even analyst. Both Psychoanalysis and other traditions such as Zen suffer deeply from popular misrepresentation, and the phrase "annihilation of the ego" is clearly one of them. The structure of an ego undergoes deep structural shifts in analysis, too. Nor has psychoanalysis ever been available to the general public, but rather to mainly to a wealthy educated elite. Nor does it proceed successfully without considerable and far above average effort on the part of the analysand. The six or seven years of effort involved in a half way successful analysis would also get a serious Buddhist student pretty far, even if being a certified teacher usually requires minimum 15 years of mostly (though not all) monastic practice. How long does it take to become a high quality certified analyst?
It is probably better to compare the "five and dime guru" with the "positive thinking therapist", or one of these other popular emotional quick-fixes. Populism has never helped any spiritual or intellectual tradition. They do their best to provide more or less compassionate support to the public (e.g. with religious or social ritual), but understanding them requires effort, dedication, and time: time usually well spent.
anonymous,
You got me completely wrong! I'm not comparing Freud with five and dime gurus! I'm saying that psychoanalysis doesn't offer any easy path to spiritual enlightenment -- but that is the way it SHOULD be.
Freud thought that spiritual virtuosity was beyond most people, but that analysis is not. Unfortunately, psychoanalysis is NOT accessible to a wide swathe of the population in Anglo Saxon countries, but this is not the way things have to be. In Latin American countries, psychoanalysis is more popular in all senses of the term.
The high cost of psychoanalysis has to do with analysts wanting to be medical doctors and bureaucratizing IPA regulations.
Last I tried it in the state, a session cost $140.00 a pop, I'm sure it's over $200.00. That is a joke! People looking for help usually end up in the hands of psychopharmacology.
Yes, psychoanalysis takes years and well it should. It is not an easy fix -- and should not be!
But read a little more carefully anonymous! I'm not trashing psychoanalysis! Quite the opposite!
"You got me completely wrong! I'm not comparing Freud with five and dime gurus! ... But read a little more carefully anonymous! I'm not trashing psychoanalysis! Quite the opposite!"
uhh... more careful reading in turn would have shown that I wasn't saying that.I didn't say "compare". I just though it is too easy to take pot shots at what you were calling "zen", if you are pitting Freud (a brilliant thinker) _against_ ("juxtappose" I said, which means to place in proximity for contrast) some nickel and dime guru. How about pitting him against Dogen, or Nagarjuna if you like things more complicated.
Perhaps Freud thought psychoanalysis is for the average person. The patients upon which he based his "studies" (whatever empirical value they actually had) weren't average.
What I am saying is that psychoanalyisis is nearly (and aught to be) as difficult as zen (e.g).
If it takes years and effort, it pretty much automatically no longer is available to a broader range of people. Not just for financial reasons.
Anonymous,
I stand corrected regarding your use of "juxtapose," but what are you, a zen "empiricist"? Freud did not perform "studies" -- he took people on in analysis. The clinical setting is not at all akin to the "laboratory" or research control group. You seem to know that.
I can't claim any knowledge of the zen masters you cite and defer to your greater knowledge. I think the difficult of psychoanalysis and the difficulty of zen are not comparable -- they are not opposed in anyway, but perhaps apposite, without any real relation.
I was being facetious about the empiricism and should have indicated it with an emoticon.
I do think that Freud presented his work at first in a style that mimicked that of "scientific" work. Perhaps that was necessary for it to be taken seriously at the time. And his theories of childhood development also are presented as truth which is in some way objective and observable.
I personally think that analysis matched cultural obsessions of an era (which is perhaps beginning to wane) with until then rarely articulated aspects of human experience, thereby creating a new concept of what a person is. And did so in an astonishingly prolific manner, so prolific in fact that that's all I would ever say about it in a blog.
_You_ chose the example of zen. I just think that such traditions are much more complex than what nickle and dime gurus preach and that analysis is deeper than what nickle and dime therapists mess around with.
So I just thought that you have dedicated so much work to Freud, Lacan, and others, yet were stemming them against unworthy representatives of worthy traditions. I personally like equally to take pot shots at gurus _and_ therapists.
I liked your student's question,"Human being?".
Perhaps that is the question into which zen, analysis, and you put so much effort.
Some of our recent posts mentioned your yoga. How would you integrate what you experience there with psychoanalytic terminology? Eastern traditions seem to know more than we do about what I like to call "reverse psychosomatics": how the body affects the psyche, and the techniques for doing that.
oops, a _very_ misleading typo:
that last paragraph should have read: "some of _your_ recent posts mention ..."
I hope this doesn't cause misunderstandings :-)
I cannot claim that the forms of yoga I have learned and practiced in the West have anything to do with "Eastern traditions." They have been thoroughly adapted to Western needs. For example, at the studio where I go, there is an obsession with abs -- I'm sure that Mr. Iyengar would find this incomprehensible.
But I think that to write "Eastern tradition" is to ignore the fact that the "East" has been undergoing cataclysmic waves of modernization. It does not provide "alternative" knowledge about any body/mind split, and certainly its forms of knowledge are not longer "purely" traditional.
That said, yoga is a powerful discipline of the body, perhaps the most powerful that I have experienced and for that I am daily grateful.
"That said, yoga is a powerful discipline of the body, perhaps the most powerful that I have experienced and for that I am daily grateful."
Do you think that it effects you psychologically,or even intellectually, beyond being calming, or beyond exercising your limbs?
Maybe, but you should talk to Avital Ronell. She is willing to translate her yogic experiences into rhetorical flourishes. I have more physical stamina for writing, but then I would reduce yoga to a physical therapy, and it is more than that.
This exchange makes me think that I must post more explicitly on historical erasure that takes place when we pit "Eastern Traditions" against Western rationality.
That would be interesting, though I should clarify that I am not trying to pit them against each other at all, and I only hesitatingly use phrases like "alternative knowledge" or "mind/body" split, beyond perhaps how the mind-body problem is (variously) formulated in western philosophy.
All I really was trying to say was that there seems to be long tradition in India, China, Japan, and surrounding countries, of using physical exercises, which Westerners considered rather unusual until recently, in a way which is deeply embedded in psychological, religious, or soteriological beliefs. There are still countless people who are highly skilled and articulate about it.
The European/North American West has less of this ( we have things like the "Shakers").
Psychoanalysis however makes rather universal claims about human nature and how it is most healthily expressed. And I find that trying to describe what goes in yogic or other oriental mediation based traditions is nearly impossible to reconcile with several psychoanalytic claims and telea.
In reality, I was disagreeing with only very little of your actual claims, really only the issue about populism.
You may be right, however, that this exchange needs a restart from a different angle.
It took shapes which I hardly intended with my original post, partly because of misunderstandings, but also because my tone was probably too contentious.
And yes I should check out Avital Ronell, since I haven't since I don't know when ... could it be since the Telephone Book?
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